{"id":14440,"date":"2015-04-01T13:39:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T17:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=14440"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:59:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:59:50","slug":"olivias-blog-show-kurt-vonnegut-what-youre-made-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2015\/olivias-blog-show-kurt-vonnegut-what-youre-made-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Show Kurt Vonnegut What You\u2019re Made Of"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Show Kurt Vonnegut What You\u2019re Made Of\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

In his epic poem The Wasteland<\/em>, T.S. Eliot famously wrote that \u201cApril is the cruellest month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, with all due respect to the memory of Mr. Eliot, I believe that he may have been wrong. In the lives of millions of university students, at least, that superlative tends to be spared for the nightmarish month of March. And, when I say nightmarish, I mean it quite literally. Because even in the depths of sleep, there is no reprieve from the intensely grinding task of essay writing. Introductory remarks, thesis statements, supporting evidence, and transitional sentences float around in your subconscious, reformulating themselves ad infinitum or else unravelling like a many-coloured spool of wool, as if Salvador Dali has taken over the editing process. (I\u2019m not the only one who writes papers in her sleep, am I?). This is, I imagine, something like the academic world\u2019s version of \u201cmethod acting,\u201d only you don\u2019t get a million dollars and a golden, vaguely-gendered statue for putting on such a show. Instead, you end up developing a series of symptoms for which the internet has no doubt invented a pathology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To spare you from the corrupt cesspool that is WebMD, I have developed an agreement scale with which to judge the severity of your end-of-term illness. In an attempt to be as representative as possible, I have included items that relate to my own experience, to the experiences of friends, and to the experiences of people whose conversations I\u2019ve shamelessly eavesdropped on[1]<\/a>[2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Signs That You Might Be Suffering From Finals-Induced Hysteria (Known in Fake Clinical Practices as Biblioencephalitis, Which Translates Roughly to \u201cBook-Induced Brain Inflammation\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

**Rate on a scale from 1-5, where 1 = \u201cI have no idea what you\u2019re talking about\u201d and 5 = \u201c1000% ACCURATE.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. You experience fits of crying followed by fits of laughing, or you engage in cry-laughing, a thoroughly disorienting emotional hybrid that makes you want to take a nap, but you can\u2019t because you have papers to write, so you cry again.<\/li>
  2. The walk from the Uni Centre to the O-Train station is the most fresh air you get all day.<\/li>
  3. Getting dressed in your street clothes just seems superfluous; also, you have no clean laundry anyways.<\/li>
  4. The concept of \u201cliving a balanced life\u201d seems like a sham created by retailers to make you feel bad about yourself so that you\u2019ll go out and buy stuff you can\u2019t afford to make yourself feel better. And then you\u2019ll feel bad about shopping when you should have been writing your papers. So you\u2019ll buy a pint of ice cream and eat it in one sitting.<\/li>
  5. A menu of beer or wine sounds like a really good dinner plan.<\/li>
  6. Instead of focussing on editing content, you parse your essays for grammar and spelling mistakes because it makes you feel like you\u2019re in command.<\/li>
  7. Your room looks like a library that has recently been raided.<\/li>
  8. Frozen pizzas are one of your only food groups.<\/li>
  9. Your optimistically purchased day planner is largely empty except for entries in the first week of January and the last two weeks of March.<\/li>
  10. Gym? What is a gym?<\/li>
  11. Taking off into the Canadian wilderness with a tent and trusty golden retriever named Atticus sounds pretty good right now.<\/li>
  12. You get inordinately excited about free baked goods, cold cans of soda, and pictures of cute inter-species friendships. (Have you seen that one of a pug cuddling with a duckling?)<\/li>
  13. You start re-watching episodes of your favourite TV show from your youth to remind yourself of \u201csimpler times.\u201d<\/li>
  14. Nothing is fair and everything hurts.<\/li>
  15. You want your mommy.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Now, tally up your points and compare with the chart below.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Point Range<\/strong><\/td>Diagnosis<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
    13-25 points<\/td>Congratulations, you have somehow managed to evade all or almost all symptoms of this pernicious disease. Please forward your tips and tricks to olivia.polk@carleton.ca<\/a>. Compensation may be provided. If I haven\u2019t already spent my meagre earnings on ice cream or a shame-induced shopping spree.<\/td><\/tr>
    25-45 points<\/td>You are wavering on the tightrope between healthfulness and malady. The stationing of a safety net is highly recommended<\/td><\/tr>
    45-65 points<\/td>ONE OF US. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    I guess the next step would be for me to tell you what you can do (within legal limits) to alleviate some of these symptoms. Oh, would that I could, dear reader, would that I could! Unfortunately, even after four-or-so years of first-hand experience, I am in no better a position to handle this seasonal illness than you are. And even if I knew what you should do, it wouldn\u2019t matter, because none of us has the time to implement a cure anyways. Oh, the poetic paradox of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have, however, picked up some sage advice during my time here at Carleton, whether it be from professors, novelists, poets, or friends who are way smarter than I am. Indeed, a few months ago, my friend Isuri and I were chatting over coffee about the moments in our lives when we\u2019ve felt certain that we weren\u2019t going to make it, that we were going to fall apart and never be able to put ourselves back together again. We weren\u2019t talking about school in particular, but academics have certainly occasioned more than a couple of meltdowns in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Anyways, this friend of mine started talking about a piece of advice that Kurt Vonnegut gave to burgeoning short-story writers, which went something like this: \u201cMake awful things happen to your characters in order that you might see what they\u2019re made of.\u201d Of course, being Vonnegut, he went on to suggest that great writers are writers who break the rules. But my friend took the advice and applied it to her own story. After a particularly challenging event in her life, she took a Post-It note, placed it on her mirror, and scribbled: \u201cRemember that Kurt Vonnegut is just testing you to see what you\u2019re made of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Okay, so maybe the end-of-term work rush isn\u2019t \u2018awful\u2019 in the sense that Vonnegut meant, and the super ego inside of me certainly has no shortage of reproofs for such an outlook: \u201cDon\u2019t you know how privileged you are to be in this position?! Stop complaining! Your life is incredible! Engage yourself with the material! Isn\u2019t this what you want to do for a living? Why are you so frustrated, then?! You\u2019re a fraud!!\u201d But this doesn\u2019t change the fact that, by the end of the semester, it\u2019s hard not to feel depleted and uninspired. At a certain point, you run out of opinions and your critical insights start feeling a bit stale. All you want is to be finished. For these reasons, the month does seem pretty cruel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So, my advice to you is this: listen to the advice of my friend, who took her advice from Vonnegut. Every morning, or afternoon, or evening, besides reminding yourself of how much work you still have left to do, remember that you are merely another human being whose character is continually being tested. Whether you want to imagine your \u201cauthor\u201d as being Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, or [fill-in-the-blank], think about this cruellest of months as a plot device wrought by a (mostly) benevolent artist who desperately wants to see you succeed. On the surface, it seems like a pretty weird strategy, but, if you\u2019re having a hard time believing in yourself, at least you can believe in the person who\u2019s writing your life. (Unless it\u2019s Stephen King. You can\u2019t trust that man with anything.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    March might be the month of cry-laughing, binge-eating, shame-shopping, and sleep-writing. It might be 31 days full of exhaustion, anxiety, and writer\u2019s block. But it is also the month to show people \u2013 to show yourself \u2013 what you\u2019re made of. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    [1]<\/a> Another benefit of being an English major: you can turn everyday nosiness into a \u201ccharacter study\u201d any time you want. And people will think that you\u2019re artsy and deep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    [2]<\/a> Actually, that\u2019s a lie. They\u2019ll probably just think that you\u2019re weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    [3]<\/a> Another helpful piece of advice: watch The Toast<\/em> writer Mallory Ortberg recite her<\/em> satirical advice column \u201cHow To Respond to Criticism\u201d: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MJNXNIPlsSY<\/a>. It is guaranteed to make you feel better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In his epic poem The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot famously wrote that \u201cApril is the cruellest month.\u201d Well, with all due respect to the memory of Mr. Eliot, I believe that he may have been wrong. In the lives of millions of university students, at least, that superlative tends to be spared for the nightmarish month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,27,29,25,849],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-14440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-news","category-olivias-blog","category-student-blogs","category-student-voices","tag-olivias-blog"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53687,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14440\/revisions\/53687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}