Rising Above Mediocrity
by Benjamin Geiger

I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been deluding myself, thinking I can get by on my own merits. I did this because I was never very sociable; I never understood the fundamental, unwritten rules behind social interaction. I didn’t want to be asocial. I wanted to make friends. I just didn’t know how.

Eventually I tried to distance myself from everyone, consciously removing myself from the popularity contests that plagued typical social life. Instead, I would work to become the best at whatever I chose to do. That way, I could rise above mediocrity and do an end-run around the buddy-buddy network.

Turns out that the buddy-buddy network controls everything, and if you’re not part of it, all the talent and dedication in the world doesn’t count for shit. An excellent loner gets nowhere, but a mediocre, but social, person rises to positions of power and money.

I have nothing against friendship. I just don’t want insincerity. I’ve always looked with disgust at people who get what they want because they “know somebody”. I won’t willingly become that which I despise.

So. I’ve chosen my path; now I must follow it. I’ll continue to improve myself, and add various letters after my name. I’ll work until I can get what I deserve, honestly. I won’t resort to trickery and office politics and backstabbing and bullshit to get what I want. And if it gets me nowhere, I can serve as a warning to others.

I beat Jonathan today.

Maybe I overestimated the average visitor’s familiarity with Wiki technology. This seems to have led to some confusion as to how to add a comment. I’m in the process of writing an extension to MoinMoin that will allow comments to be added much more easily, but in the meantime, I need to explain the current system.

To add a comment:

Click on the “Comments…” link at the end of an entry.

If a comment page already exists (it says anything other than “Create This Page”), click the “Edit Text” link at the bottom of the page. If the page does not exist, click the “Create This Page” link.

If adding comments to a page that already exists, type a row of four dashes after the last entry, to separate that text from the entry you are about to create. This is not necessary if you are the first commenter (if you had to create the page).

Type your comments. To separate paragraphs, leave a blank line.

Once you’re done typing your comments, leave a blank line after the last text, then type two dashes and your first and last name, run together. (It should look like YourName.)

At this point, the your text should look like this:
stuff other people wrote…

— TheirName

—-

Your text. More of your text. Even more of your text.

Another paragraph.

— YourName

Press “Preview” to see how your comment looks. This is important. If you’re unhappy with how it looks, you can change it and press “Preview” again. You can do this as many times as you’d like.

Once you’re happy with how your text looks, press “Save Changes”.

I apologize for the complexity of this system, but I assure you that it will get easier.

With good reason, too.

Last Thursday morning, my leg was numb when I woke up. When I stood up and tried to take a step, I ended up on the floor with an injured foot. Pretty pathetic, isn’t it? I couldn’t put any pressure on my right foot for the first day, and since then I’ve been hobbling or using a cane.

I have an appointment with my doctor for this coming Friday. I don’t think anything is broken (if I did, I would have been in the ER) but it’s still swollen a week later, and it’ll be nice to know whether there’s any serious damage.

You think I’m exaggerating.

I’m fine in text (at least I think I am). I can generally hold my own with groups up to about five. But put me in front of a class and I choke.

Today, I had to give a presentation to my ComputerEthics class. I did fairly well, I think; I had a Keynote presentation to keep me on track, and my partner helped somewhat (though not much, since I did most of the research on my portion). On the reviews that we’re all required to give for each others’ presentations, someone wrote: “Don’t emphasize when you stumble, it just draws more attention to it.” And I stumbled a lot .

Here’s the saddest part: I want to be a professor when I graduate.

Somehow I need to learn how to speak properly in public. Perhaps part of it is knowledge; I usually don’t know all of my subject matter well enough to speak impromptu. This does not bode well for my future academic career, though; if I can’t make a decent presentation, how can I defend a thesis or a dissertation?

I guess I’ll just add public speaking to my list of “things I need to learn before I can be considered a true human being”.

Throughout my childhood, I was told by well-meaning adults that if I work hard enough at something, things will turn out right. What a bunch of liars they were.

How am I expected to be an expert at anything, if merely being mediocre takes more effort than I can muster? That’s all I really want: I want to be competent at something—anything—and to be recognized for that competence.

What should I do? I’ve already missed the boat, it seems; anyone who is skilled at his job seems to have picked up the interest in early childhood. I’m already twenty-two years old. Most of my peers are only a semester or two away from a baccalaureate degree. I had a four year head start and still haven’t earned mine. (Rather, I’ve earned it many times over, but been shafted out of it by the Florida university system.)

It’s too late to change majors, unless I want to spend another four years in school. There are no jobs for computer science graduates, not to mention people with neurological disorders. I can’t even live on my own; I can’t hold a job long enough to afford an apartment, and even if I could, I don’t know if I could handle the day to day minutiae that normal life entails.

The outlook is pretty bleak, and I can’t foresee it getting much better.

They say you have to get weaker before you can get stronger. If that’s the case, I’m ready to become shodan .

In a 27-hour period I played 17 games, losing 13. This dropped me from 17k to 19k. Instead of the solid 18k I thought I was, I’m turning out to be a weak 20k or worse.

Of course, it’s bad enough that people who started playing months after I did are already approaching shodan. Hell, even Jonathan had the nerve to imply that I’m somehow too stupid to advance even though I “have the time to sit on my ass all day and play on KGS”.

Something’s wrong here.

I hadn’t played ? RobBarrell in way too long. I finally got a chance to play him tonight; I took black in an even game and won by 49.

My glee was not to last, though; I played an even game against “the other Chris” (the one that isn’t Evil and isn’t Ck) and lost by about the same margin. Even so, though, I managed to kill some groups that would otherwise have lived.

On a related note, I installed Many Faces of Go and spend Sunday night doing tsumego after tsumego. Fourteen hundred of them, in fact, answering correctly on the first try between half and two thirds of the time. Combined with my continuing play on KGS (though I’ve slacked off… I need to play more), this should help me gain a few stones’ strength.

Memorial day has come and gone again, and our collective mind is drawn to the sacrifice made by members of our military. Millions of soldiers have died in US wars, just and unjust.

What have we learned from the ill-fated ‘war’ in Vietnam? When soldiers returned from that conflict (most no older than I am now), they were cursed and spat upon. Those that didn’t return were no better remembered. Most people transferred their disdain for the government’s decisions onto those who were ordered to implement them, even though they had absolutely no say in the matter.

Eventually, people learned the folly of their ways. In fact, society has overreacted, and now any disapproval of any conflict is seen as a personal attack on every soldier. Whenever I raise my voice to oppose the unjust invasion of Iraq, the inevitable first response is, “so you don’t support the troops, then?”

I support the troops. I don’t support the leaders.

Now, more than ever, we need to appreciate the sacrifice made by our men and women in uniform, and remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to support the decisions of our government. We owe it to them to ensure that no more young people die for unjust causes.

(*) “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.” (Horace)