Faking to Become

"Category: Entertainment. $400 Answer: the reason why I watch Jeopardy. Question: What is it makes me feel smarter?"

During the summer, I like to make time to watch "Jeopardy" everyday. It is perhaps the best half hour of the day, snuggling into the couch with a Fresca and just shouting out "questions" to the television during the show. "The Volga," "Broadway Hits," and "Do You 'C' It (notice the quotation marks)" would be among my favorite categories to watch, but of course the "Jeopardy" questionnaires come up with much more riveting categories. The thing is, although I love to watch it, I myself am not very good at it. I perhaps question correctly three to five answers per game, out of the 61 possible. It seems I like to watch the game even though it could easily make me feel rather stupid and inferior to the people on the screen. For some reason it doesn’t.

One of the best feelings of accomplishment for me is gaining knowledge without praise. I like to learn things without people congratulating me on what I've learned. In such a case, I have done the effort and taken the initiative to learn, instead of it being required, as in school. However, my life thus far has been full of the opposite kinds of success, in which I try to learn something but I fail.

Before the epic flood in Cedar Rapids, I used to go to the Cedar Rapids Public Library about once every one or two months, and every time I went I spent at least two or three hours there, often hiding myself in books in the language section. Chinese, French, Arabic; I wanted to learn them all, and at the end of the day I had four or so more books all dealing with languages, often different languages. The day after I would flip through the books and maybe read the first chapter or so, but after that, the books just collected dust on my bedside shelf. I was kaput until I made my next trip to library and the whole thing would start over again.

I went to the library all those times and hardly finished a book I checked out. I was basically faking to become smarter. I wasn't knowledgeable at all before watching Jeopardy or going to the library, but by simply doing those things I felt that I was smarter, even if I had gained no true knowledge. Nonetheless, after time I did learn some things that I kept: the Greek alphabet, e.g. By pretending that I was smart I actually became smarter. It's like acting on a stage, by portraying the character so very thoroughly, you start to think about the ideas that the character represents, and you bring them into your own life. It is nearly the same with books and gameshows; by portraying an intelligent person I have brought some of that character into my own life.

You see, when I have learned something by actually reading the whole book, for example, it is the greatest feeling because I know that I have not faked my knowledge. I have put time and effort into learning it, instead of just flipping open the first page and pretending I know the book from the summary. Time and effort are much better than praise, no matter what.