Casual

...Rather, if one week a topic tickles my fancy, I write about it...

...I've realized that if I'm an intellectual, it's purely a matter of social classification...

...Needless to say, the talks were a major intellectual event, marking a sea change in the culture...

...But I am again haunted by the specter of genuine scholars, with their actual gray hair, long French quotations, and impressive diagrams...

...What I am is a writer, a journalist—one, to boot, who's particularly promiscuous in his interests...

...News and World Report-rated institution failed to recognize my remarkable powers...

...Add to this problem the fact that I am not actually learned...

...I started fantasizing about this moment years ago, with the return of my first college grades...

...I'll persevere...

...Recently I learned a lot about music for a piece I was writing on soul, but, boy, I struggled to finish the article, haunted the whole time by how little I knew compared with the truly learned writers I was reading...

...The positive way of looking at this is that I am a generalist...

...Then I come out of it and realize I have very little idea what I am going to say in my very real lecture...

...I would give the most cynical speech possible on making one's way in the world...

...The workaday journalist can't expect to be seen as anything but a total lightweight by people who really know about a subject...

...What modest store of knowledge I possess I am not ashamed of, but it lacks the weight of major accomplishment...

...As a defense mechanism, I've come up with an enormously vague lecture topic in which I am stuffing all sorts of odds and ends arranged so as to create the appearance of deep knowledge...

...If another week, the same subject provokes a yawn, I move on...

...I have over the years added new details to my homecoming fantasy...

...Other fantasy lectures I delivered back then took place at colleges where I'd been refused admission...

...No, the political science department has invited me to deliver a lecture to an audience of students and professors on a topic of my choice— you know, like a gray-haired worthy speaking on Important Matters of the Day...

...And if I should come up short, there's always the old campus bar...

...I'm better off than some, in this regard, since working for a weekly allows a generalist like me the time to bone up on a subject before having to commit himself in print...

...I picture the big woodpaneled and stained-glass lecture hall where I took Intro to Religion and imagine myself taking everyone's breath away with some hilarious, rapier-witted talk in which I blend anecdote, hard learning, long quotations in foreign languages I don't speak, and gigantic mathematical equations of the kind featured in Good Will Hunting, the whole performance bolstered by a stage presence so confident, so swaggering, that Peter O'Toole, were he watching in the wings, would crumble in envy...

...I have no "beat," no regular subject I've gained intimacy with over the years...

...In my shoes, some wannabe thinkers would blame the profession, and I'm not above doing so...

...But if I were to give a lecture based on the skills I've developed, it would have to be titled "Non-Specialization: The Key to An Enjoyable Professional Life and Something Less than Stunning Worldly Success...

...DAVID SKINNER...

...Thoroughly stung by that swarm of B's, I took long showers and rehearsed my revenge lecture, throughout which I would glance knowingly at professors whose shortsighted appraisals of my work were now contradicted by my widely acclaimed brilliance...

...But now the whole thing's become a distraction...

...And yet, even after reading a few books (or perhaps as a result), I usually see more clearly than ever that I have achieved something well short of papal authority on what I am writing about...

...That's little comfort now that I'm working on my address to my alma mater...

...What to do...

...I am returning to my alma mater, not, mind you, to hang around the old campus bar like some aging cad talking up the coeds with their fake IDs (though maybe I'll do that too...

...I would convincingly and without breaking a sweat disabuse those assembled of their false gods, and make them rue the day their Top Five U.S...

...The title would be "Flattery: The Key to Success in Life...

...I'll keep reminding myself that I'm only a journalist...

...Most of the audience will be students, presumably, but several of my old professors will be there, and some of these guys are the real thing...

...David," I had to keep telling myself, "Remember, you're only a journalist...

...I would argue that school was like life—A's were awarded to suck-ups, while true greatness went unrecognized...

...I'll work hard...