Gold Star

I was thinking in the car, on my way home from my unsatisfying, part-time, completely-contrary-to-my-degree job, how much I missed school; how much I missed doing homework, how much I missed completing a task with one singular purpose... the grade.

I don't get grades anymore, and to be honest, I stopped caring about getting grades when I realized getting by on a "C", though perhaps disingenuous to my intellect, is all I had time for when I wanted to drink and do other brain cell obliterating things.

But, now that I am out in the world, degree in hand, no mid-term, or hurdle to jump in site except the ones I choose... I am desperately afraid of a no grade life style. It should be wrong how socialized I am to thinking that the grade matters, that the test score is truly the epitome of your knowledge, but that freaking gold star and "A" has some elusive power over me: and I will say, over my generation.

Certainty. That may be a part of it. Like math, a subject of which I know little now except what I see in my Sudoku, or in calculating gratuity... 2+2=4... It's so certain. Well its certain in its own little universe. Plugging and chugging to get an answer seems like what I was built for... and now, well there seems to be a whole lot of plugging and chugging (how does this sound sexual?) and very little answers.

Getting an A, in red writing, in blue, black, typed, scrawled, blinking on a screen; it's magic. That little Gold Star, the recognition you got from it as a child.... Well shoot...it may not really mean anything, but it sure was satisfying.