Today I told my class that I think Penn State students don’t go outside enough, and are wasting the perfectly decent wilderness that surrounds them. They stared at me liked I’d expressed a desire for the retirement of Paterno. How dare she! I can’t seem to help but alienate myself in my classes. It’s like, a hobby.

In my defense, I was answering a question about my personality. In the professor’s defense, I need to stop volunteering to answer his questions, because I can never answer them directly. “What kind of person are you?” A sane person might say something like “Nice, outgoing, open,” or even the occasional self-slander. …I stumble about for five minutes unable to describe myself (I hadn’t known I was volunteering for this question). Finally he asks, helpfully, for some of my values. Values? …I like buttons? Do normal people have this kind of thing on the back-burner, stored up for the day that someone springs a “describe yourself!”?

“I’m a hard worker, and tidy, and a democrat. I love long walks and puppies! I’m going to be a big, powerful lawyer in Manhattan and swim in my millions of dollars every day. I love the Lord our Savior and believe that all people are wicked sinners that need to go to church. Oh, and I love jello shots.”

Through a series of blunt questions and my bizarre, indirect answers it was concluded that I am

“Nature-oriented and ‘experimental.’ Also anti-money and chaotic.”

…I think he got the last two strictly out of my inability to answer the questions with words like “adventurous,”  and my shoes, which are made of old bicycle tires.

I’m crap at selling myself.  I’d make a really shitty hooker. But qualities and quirks, like names, are things other people are supposed to worry about. Not you. Or that’s what I thought~…So instead of saying I like the outdoors, I accused the class of squandering beauty. Magical.