Substandard

I am committed to failure on this one — there is little I can say to make it much better, I am afraid. For an assignment that I was initially quite excited for, I could not have done worse on it.

However, there is something liberating in failure, I think. That is to say, I no longer need to talk about “how I felt about the game” (considering I can sum it up in one word — bad) because I did not play.

Considering how grossly verbose I am, I will not pass up an opportunity to talk this one out. As I said, I am committed to failure here in this particular post, and respectively, liberated to stray from the conventional conversation that would ensue; normally consisting of generic opinions regarding the nature of the game, I have an opportunity to discuss from a perspective different from those of my classmates.

The substandard student — the one in the back of the class who is both failing and too scared or too shy or too proud to do anything about it. Where an assignment is the mountain, and the pen a broken pick and tether, dangling uselessly about the hip. Frustration mounting at personal incompetence, wondering if oneself is mentally deficient — learning disabilities, or just stupid? If you had ever been this person, you would know what I am talking about. All thoughts come in frustrating short little bursts, each as pointless and unhelpful as the last, none contributing to what must get done. Each thought under 140 characters.

Now that I think about it, Twitter is the perfect place for a new game I thought up — let’s see who can uselessly add to the pool of pointless frustrating thought bubbles that exist in this world! I’ve already started, so I think I am in the lead:

https://twitter.com/osorio_abimael/status/533806368197603328

I know it seems like I hate Twitter. At the core of this, I want you to know that yes I hate it with a seething anger. But it is not because of the targeted advertising or the puzzling 140 character limit (I have had English teachers working the Spanish Inquisition on my ass for being too wordy since I was 10, AND I REFUSE TO CHOP MY WORDS UP TO ESSENTIAL VOWELS AND CONSONANTS TO HAVE PEOPLE GUESS WHAT THE HELL I AM TRYING TO SAY), but instead I think it might be its incompatibility with me.

I wonder if I can force the essence of human thought into 140 characters, or discuss political points, or perhaps hold a decent conversation. Hell, I wonder if I can explain what I had for dinner in 140 characters. This assignment has taught me something infinitely valuable — that I CANNOT.

Are my thoughts too long for this world? Or does everyone else condense their thoughts expertly with a skill that I simply do not have? Am I stupid? Learning disabilities?

I used to frequent that spot in the back of the classroom (in grade school, exclusively), the place where failure festers. Vowing I would never be there again, I cannot help but feel a rush of frustration, white-hot and painful, when I finally threw my hands up in exasperation after a prize-fight with the twitter interface.

It took me an entire 2 hours to find out that it was not #tvz, but instead, #tvsz. In those 2 hours, the last 30 minutes I found out what the @ means. I found out that I could tweet to classmates, and proceeded to do so. I did not know how to ask for help, not in 140 characters — call it machismo that I could not bring myself to do it. Or another name still; Incompetence. Whatever you will call it, I will call it shame. Shame that I am so goddamn dull for not being able to figure out something that is so simple for others.

Or is it actually simple to others? I can never tell.

It seems I might be blowing this out of proportions. “Why are you getting worked up over a failed assignment? F@#$ it,” Priscilla said to me, “Just forget it.” Sure.

Time and time again, a great guilt is on my chest. A mounting hatred for something I was initially quite excited for. Sweet turned sour and unpalatable very quickly, but why?

If you ever failed a class you sincerely and dearly wanted to pass, you already know why. Any given assignment, for people failure bound, for those who do not do well in the school environment, has this terrible risk of growing to insurmountable proportions. A one page paper, given to those in the back of the classroom, tends to be exactly three or four pages worth of effort harder for that person then it is for the rest of the class. What is worse is that the paper can grow exponentially; a one page paper soon feels like it is ten. Then it grows more, to twenty, thirty pages — then you say something to reassure yourself, to attempt to convince yourself that you are not in fact stupid or incompetent or substandard. You say, “Well, the assignment was stupid anyway.”

Call my visceral response to twitter just a result of weakened self-confidence regarding my intelligence. I will blame everything but my own incompetence because I do not want to admit that I cannot figure it out on my own. Because, as I see it, there will always be a little bit of the substandard student in me. I will always have that little defense mechanism that 5 years of straight fails and Ds will bring. That deep down, I might truly be substandard.

In my eyes, this assignment grew in a way that assignments have not for a long time. As I scoured the tvsz hash tag, I felt a mounting intimidation. I did not know how to tell who was responding to whom, what was going on. New rules? What is that? Click and read… Ok something new is up. Wait, what is that person doing? Dragons? Is that the right hash tag, or did I write it wrong again? No it is right… wait is it? Does something different come up if I write TvsZ opposed to tvsz? Food? Shelter? How do I post pictures? What?

I was officially lost some time around 6:40 pm on the 15th, and committed to fail. Because, you know what? My thoughts do not come in 140 character tweets. They come in 1,082-word blog posts.