Quit Acting Smart: Thoughts on the Fallout from WHM, & the Video Clips I Shared

When I was a little girl I spent a significant amount of time with my grandparents in Warner Robins, Georgia—a flat, uninteresting place populated by Air Force employees at the local base, fire ants the size of your pinky toe, and waves of tiny black gnats. I love my grandfather, and he loved me. Sometimes, when left alone in the yard or the basement for hours while the grown-ups napped in the stifling midday heat, I tended to work myself into some daydream that resulted in rather a mess of red clay and rivulets of water through the yard or pulled out scraps of old clothes and pictures from the trunks molding in the basement. My grandfather would take out his cigar to confront me, and when I tried to account for my behavior (often truly mystified, not remembering exactly how all of that mess came to be while I was wrapped up in the story in my head), he would snap at me: “Quit acting smart, girl.” It is not something he ever said to my brother.

As an adult, and years after his death, I remember thinking this was an odd phrase even as a six-year-old. What does that mean, to act smart? And why should one stop? Does it mean that you aren’t smart, if someone says you are acting smart? Do you only have the ability to act, but not the real intelligence? And if you are acting smart, how do you come to be smart? 

This memory resurfaces for me in light of our recent (sometimes intense, thank you 3:30!) discussions about women’s history and treatment in the media. When we declare March Women’s History Month and spend a few hours thinking and talking about how, as Margaret Cho put it, “the media treats women like shit,” are we acting smart?

Some of you seem to think so. Some of you seem to think that by addressing the issue, we are creating the issue. This is the ‘speak no evil’ approach to history that declares there is only a problem if we call it a problem. But it is a problem, and part of the problem stems from not only how the media treats women, but how we allow ourselves to be treated. One of the clips read at the event in the library comes from A Vindication on the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft, in 1792, where she rather sarcastically writes, “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.” 

When women act scatterbrained or ditzy or bored with education or claim we are too small-minded to “get it,” whatever “it” is, we are playing directly into that pervasive, obviously age-old stereotype that gives everyone, male and female, permission to treat women as “perpetual children.” This leads directly to laws, statues, and policies that result in a further eroding of our own power to make our own decisions about our own bodies, our lives, our families, our futures, our roles, our identities. We are too weak and feeble-minded to figure this out for ourselves, we say to the (mostly male) politicians. You guys do it for us. 

And in this way, I agree with my grandfather. Quit acting smart. You are smart. Be it.

You Want Me to Read the Whole Thing?!? OR: My Own Midterm Rant

My dear, darling, brilliant, wonderful students,

Here we are on Day 2 of Spring Break, and I'm already thinking of you again. I successfully kept myself from working yesterday by watching MI-5 on Netflix and drinking red wine making cupcakes. Today, I'm antsy. I find myself so completely immersed in planning for our days together, reading your own blogs and papers, and figuring out ways to make life in 1101 and 1102 more interesting for both of us that an abrupt hiatus like Spring Break seems to serve as a fitful interruption more than a much-needed rest.

It's been good so far between us, yes? I think yes. And yet...and yet...I must confess, I'm bothered by a few trends. Shall we discuss?

1) To the student who says: "Oh, we were supposed to read that? Oh, yeah, I didn't read it."

Hypothetically, what would happen if you turned in a paper, and I said "Oh, I was supposed to grade that? Oh, yeah, I didn't grade that."

2) To the student who says: "But it's soooo loooonng!"

Believe me, the ten pages of Pulitzer Prize winning, classic, captivating fiction you have the opportunity to read as a member of a first world country where you have the chance to come to an air conditioned room and sit for 75 minutes while people discuss literature and the arts rather than having to forge in the desert for food and water while rebel armies are shooting at you is not a chore. It's a gift. Read it and say thank you.

3) To the student who says: "This is booorring."

It's a scientific fact that people who say this are, indeed, themselves, boring. Boredom is a sign of a lack of imagination. Aren't you just announcing your own mental laziness to the rest of the class? When I hear someone say "this is boring,' (even if that someone is my own child, sprung from my own cells) I think "oh, here's someone who is caught in the throes of utter mediocrity. I will now stop listening to this person, because he/she has absolutely nothing interesting or worthwhile to contribute to this discussion."

4) To the student who says: "........" [crickets]

I know you well enough now to know at least three brilliant thoughts circle around in your brain while you sit there on the third row, not saying a word. Everything you write is astute, clever, and interesting. When you talk to me separately, you are funny and you are always right about your ideas. Please, for the love of all that is academic, TALK.

5) To the student who snores:

I don't lecture in your bedroom. Don't sleep in my classroom.

6) To the student who shows up so stoned that the rest of us crave Doritos:

Dude, I don't know whether to be flattered that even though you clearly have other priorities, you still show up for my class; or, insulted because you think this is so easy that you can show up half-baked and still manage to pass. Actually, who am I kidding. We both know you aren't going to pass.

And, 7) To the students who read, show up sober, and talk:

You guys are awesome. I've loved meeting you, and I look forward to another eight weeks.