In the middle of one of my stress-induced cleaning sessions I stumbled across an old college paper I had written for a communications class. “How to Make Your Life Extraordinary,” had gotten me an “A” from one of my favorite professors, Dr. Fractenburg (he reminded me of Ed Wynn, or more specifically, Ed Wynn as Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins, and I could listen to his lectures with lyrical and comedic ease). I must’ve stashed it away because of the long, enthusiastic, and encouraging comments he gave me. I couldn’t resist, I had to read it.

The paper was a critical analysis of a Mercedes Benz advertisement in light of Tony Schwartz’s theory of evoked response. Reading the essay I was quickly reminded why most people hate to  watch television with me: I’m immune to the process and cultural premises that allows companies to urge me to purchase something through guilt of not being good enough as I am. So basically, I role my eyes and bitch about how insulting it is when advertisers tell us that buying a car equates somehow with carpe diem. But, I won’t get into all that now; I’m too tired to articulate such an argument.

What I wanted to write here was a poke at my academic self. I was so eager to sound smart in my paper that there was no sense of identity in it. A very pretentious and boring read that only becomes entertaining when you know the girl who wrote it and she how feisty she is when she talks about the things she argues for in her essays and papers (yes, I just referred to myself in the third person).

When I put it down, I started to think how interesting it would be to collect all my old college papers and re-write them with the knowledge I have now. Many of them would be light years away from what they are. Of course, that would take a lifetime (I was a philosophy and journalism major) and I’m not quite sure I’d remember the necessary facts to support a changed argument, but it’s nice to pretend that I might one day get around to it…