The Academic Orgasm

Have I talked about professors already? Forgive me if I have. Lately, I don't know if it is a product of my being in two very difficult modules, but pleasing my professors has been an essential component of my student experience. It's sort of my own fault as well: I am convinced that doing well in class and in my coursework will impress my professors immensely, although I am also pretty sure that they couldn't care less about this attempt.

I am not alone, however. It has gotten to a point where some of us are becoming increasingly infatuated with professors just because of how they speak (e.g. http://whatstandrewsfeelslike.tumblr.com/post/22127743410/when-i-interact-with-dr-mcmullin). It has become about much more than just looks; it is now about knowledge, and, alas, they are all at least 20 if not 40 years ahead of us in the game. It makes me giggle that we think that we can somehow reach to them with our little blurbs on medical anthropology and spiritual displacement in T. S. Eliot's poetry, which, by the way, we've written with sweat and blood and distressed nerves. Hopefully, these wondrous individuals were, at some point in their lives, at the stage we are at today.

Oh, but then there is that moment. That moment when they tell you you've made a good point in class (always happens when, in a state of half-consciousness at 10.00 in the morning, one blurts out anything just to break the awkward silence in the tutorial room). That moment when you get an essay back and you get a grade you really weren't expecting, and, if you're really lucky, you get some pretty good comments along the margins. That moment, my dear friends, which I like to call an 'academic orgasm'. Don't deny it: even those of you less academically inclined than me have had at least one during the course of their time here. And we know how it is with orgasms; how that rush of endorphins just keeps us going about our daily activities with a big smile on our faces...well, I think academic orgasms have two results. The first outcome also involves a smile and an energy rush to keep the achieved standard going. The second is total panic: how will we impress our professors next?!