You Should, I Should, They Should, So Forth and So on

Growing up I was fairly interested in reading books. By fairly interested I mean that I was the three time winner of the "book race" in my elementary school. This is no small feat at a school that consisted of roughly 473 students. I won these book races by reading about things that interested me. Sports, music, popular culture, etc. Reading was, and still is a past time of mine. I do not think I am some "higher than thou" person just because I read. Considering that I'm an English major I'm sure I'm surrounded by people that read consistently and potentially more than I do. These people that surround me are most likely more intellectual than me in regards to most academic areas. However, I have gained intellecualism by a different means. Now maybe I can't get into an in-depth conversation about Shakespeare or Chomskyan linguistics, but if you want to discuss the significance of this years Final Four or about the rise of garage rock in the early part of last decade I would be more than happy to engage in conversation. The significance of this though is that the reading that I have done has brought me to a place where I want to learn about the classic works of literature and the different linguistic approaches.

Gaining intellectualism through different means is important because it can be applied to almost any person in any form of society. Granted this may seem like a no brainer, I do not know that it is. Take for instance if someone is interested in pop culture. Although this is normally a lightly thought out topic and a majority of pop culture is show and not any kind of worthy tell, a young girl could learn to form an argument on why Lady Gaga is significant to society. Now granted I can not see any strong formula for a case on these grounds, part of that girls gaining intellectualism could be a part of anaylzing and developing new ideas to create valid points. This also applies to some young boy who happens to love sports. His knowledge of statistics and facts on baseball could help him get in challenging arguments on the game. The importance of this is that, while the classic works stay available and true, they will not always be appealing to people. However, there topics of conitnual change that will interest even the most clueless of people. Getting these people to tap into those topics and discovering their significance can develop intellect.

Maybe I Have "Hidden Intellectualism"

In the enlightening essay "Hidden Intellectualism," Gerald Graff brings a valid point about the acquisition of education and a different approach to becoming more intellectual. Graff supports his argument from a first person point of view in which he goes into detail about his reading interests and how they lacked "educational qualities." However it was not that he was an anti-intellectual but instead he was gaining intellectualism by other means. He also points out that while he was trying to balance between proving he was smart and being tough, that he started to gain even more intellect. I thought that his points were interesting because they are things I can relate to. Even to this day I am more in tuned with an argument about sports or some popular culture. However, I always considered these just to be novelty type arguments that didn't really have anything to do with intellect. His main points about seeing interests through "academic eyes" reminds me of one of my favorite writers, an essayist named Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman writes predominately on pop culture but he does so with such an intellect that the reader can't help but think a little differently after reading his work. I would add to this essay by going into my own examples of gaining intellect through seemingly irrelevant arguments and also use some of Klosterman's examples.

We are proud of you

Tonight I went to a high school basketball game. My alma mater which I am still unconditionally (and a little disturbingly) committed to was playing. I enjoy basketball and, with that said, I apparently enjoy high school too because at this very time in my life I am training to be a high school teacher. My aspirations besides that are to be a basketball coach. I've lived a life that is mildly ambitious about accomplishing realistic goals. I have no perception of living life to the fullest. The lack of my goals in life being prodigious is not what I care to discuss though. My greatest concern at this very time is the fact that the cheerleaders at this game --in spite of their peppiness and desire to look like women much older than they (which they may or may not have accomplished)-- had to lead some of the worst cheers/chants in the history of competitive sports. I didn't fully understand some of them and there was flawed logic in most of them.

Now, being active in sports and only acknowledging the cheerleaders when I gawked at them, I know not what makes a good cheer good, nor a bad cheer bad. There are people out there who do, however, I am not trained in the art. One cheer that stood out to me in particularly was one that insisted "the Devils can't be beat." Yes, my high school's mascot is the devil, no I do not think that the devil is the undisputed champion of competitive sports. I found this to be, quite frankly, idiotic. I deemed it this because the team had actually been beaten five times this season. Count them: one, two, three, four, FIVE!! Now I have no doubt that this is probably a quality cheer to start the season off with, or when you're the 2007 New England Patriots up to the point of the Super Bowl. I can accept that. I might even cheer along. But these seem the only exceptions. Definitely not when you're team has proven on five different occasions that they are, in fact, very beatable.

Thinking this though, took me back about a decade to when I was in the 7th grade. I played football like many 12 year old boys do and the team I was on proved in every game of the season that we were beatable. We didn't just prove it, we almost reveled in it. Now, let me come to defense for my teammates and I. We were not well coached and we were undersized, slow Caucasian boys that were a little late in puberty. Beating us was not a large task. Don't think I'm exaggerating this either. We didn't even score a touchdown until there were two games left in the season. But such as memories go, what I think about the most when I remember that Fall is not that we lost every game, or the fact that I was scared every time I touched the ball. No, what I remember are the cheerleaders. After every game we lost my teammates and I would walk, heads hanging down, back to the sidelines. And the only thing we had to walk back to were our cheerleaders chanting "We are proud of you, we said are proud of you." This always was, and always will be, insult to injury. Getting murdered in football in front of your peers and elders can be traumatizing to a middle school boy. But this traumatic experience becomes tenfold when there are schoolgirls trying to cheer you up over that defeat. They know not the humiliation. And at the time, even right now, I always find it hard to believe that a group of 12 year old girls actually took pride in my lackluster performance in a football game. They didn't know about the game, they probably didn't know what it took to win. But that is not the point. The point is that cheerleaders, as harmless as they might seem, can really devour a boy's confidence. Sure their's was a harmless attempt at cheering us up. But I didn't want to be cheered up, I wanted to win a game.

Nobody wants pity cheers. Nobody wants illogical cheers. It's time this was realized.