Work does not have its own reward

By Heather Hammer

I am a slacker. I haven't always been this way. It's something that just crept up on me last spring. I woke up one Saturday, looked in the mirror, and realized--Heather, you are a slacker.

When I first came here, I highlighted all my readings in different colored pens (not to mention I was consistently two weeks ahead of the syllabi). I showed up for my nine o'clock class at 8:55. I read my history packet while feasting on Honey Nut Cheerios in the dining hall for my early-morning breakfast, trekking to Connecticut Post Mall on public transportation, and yes, even lying in bed on Saturday nights.

But then something happened--I had an epiphany, you might say. It might have been when I was sitting in a daze in my calculus course; or it might have been when someone asked me a question about the French Revolution, and though I'd spent a whole semester learning about it, I still couldn't recall who killed Marat; or maybe it was just after I picked up another 500-page book that I had no interest in reading. But what I realized is that school sucks.

The same girl who used to know exactly how many points she needed to keep her "A" in algebra still hasn't checked her grades for last semester on Bulldog Access. The one who would only "officially" skip class senior year of high school and never missed a day before it was "legal" now has no qualms about hitting the off button on her alarm instead of the snooze.

BRIAN CARP/YH

I am a slacker, and I have become one because I no longer believe I am getting much out of being here. Let's face it--how much of the information that I learned in my sociology class freshman year am I really going to use? How much do I even remember? We read, and memorize, and learn names and facts and dates. But why? To impress people? To say you read a certain book, or learned about a certain event?

It's not that the work is too hard. I know there are a lot of challenging courses here, but academics are not necessarily the most difficult aspect of Yale life to handle. Time-consuming, yes, but I know that when I apply myself, I can do just as well as the next Jack or Jill around here.

Quite frankly, school bores me. I am a slacker. I've turned into one of those kids in high school who you knew should have been valedictorian instead of you, but who was too busy working on his or her own personal solar-powered car to care about history homework and GPAs. It's not that I'm not getting by. I get good enough grades, I show up to class most of the time, and I struggle through some reading. After all, I don't want to come home and see my report card tacked to my door with a butcher knife.

But life is more than school, and I find the real world much more entertaining and valuable than a 50-minute lecture. I can learn more from having interesting experiences and interacting with people than by reading or hearing about them.

I used to view slackers with disdain, I used to think they were lazy, wasting their time here, giving up valuable opportunities. Now I realize they might be the smartest Yalies around. We will all get the credentials, all the jobs we want, and the connections.

How much has the knowledge you've attained in the classroom really helped? Everyone will have the Yale name--what you can offer just depends on what you do while you're here. You can give your all to learning about black holes for your astronomy class, or you can find some useful way to spend your time.

I am a slacker, but I don't mind admitting it. I have the same abilities as the next guy--just different experiences. We all choose

different highways to ride on. Mine is just, as much as I can help it, outside of the confining walls of Sterling Memorial Library.

Heather Hammer is a junior in Ezra Stiles.

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