I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am – I really do – but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
There will be times in your education when, for whatever reasons, an instructor will ask you to complete an assignment that you feel is be-fricking-neath your abilities. Maybe you completed a similar task before in a previous class, maybe you are in a section where your abilities eclipse those of your classmates, or maybe a higher authority is requiring the instructor to administer the pointless project. Regardless, here are some recommendations for constructively dealing with the situation.
- Even if you feel the assignment is vapid, try giving it 110%. Establish your ethos with the instructor by blowing the task out of the water with your abilities. Maybe the instructor will then offer you some accommodations.
- Gain more from the experience by doubling your input. Read a plethora of additional sources.
- Or, double your output. Produce more than what is required. Explain, expound, expand until you exhale everything in you.
- Try working against the grain. Select a viewpoint or topic that challenges the assignment without transgressing too much—don’t get yourself kicked out of the class.
- Insert your own personal challenges, such as using obscure rhetorical devices (e.g., asyndeton, congery, tmesis, etc.), employing a set number of GRE vocabulary words (like maybe 5) throughout the assignment, or embed your own acrostic message into your text (Try not to be too cheeky!).
- Since the assignment is industrial and rote, focus on creating beauty. Make your execution elegant as a black sequined evening gown by using sensory description and figurative language.
- Try to help someone who is struggling with the assignment. Cultivate your altruism.
- If you can, finish early and work on the next task. Be expedient without being impetuous and move on to next week’s assignment. Or…
- Complete the assignment twice if you are so brilliant, Mr. or Ms. Goodwill Hunting. Run two laps instead of one.
- Alternatively, autopilot mode might be an option. Go through the motions while your astral projection is elsewhere exploring Plato’s world of form.
- Lastly, jump through the hoop, move on, don’t make a stink, don’t be a blowhard, don’t distinguish yourself, do what is required, get the grade, pass the course.
Note: this post was inspired by a recent conversation with my oldest son who commented that some of the assignments for his class at the local technical college were a little easy for him. For more about obscure rhetorical devices, read this article. And, for more about common GRE vocabulary, read this article.
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