I hate it when people are knowingly mindfucking you. You know, that blatant ""a-ha!"" moment when you come to your senses and realize that this person is deliberately trying to confuse you? The sharp feeling of complete manipulation? Like ""wow this person is intentionally screwing me over, and there is not a damn thing I can do."" Yup, that's it. And I am absolutely convinced that every student on this campus has fallen victim to this hopeless feeling.
Oh wait, am I being ""vulgar"" again? Here goes Taylor being ""juvenile and distasteful"" as she swears in the newspaper again. Well, you are incorrect. This concept of ""mindfucking"" was actually brought to my attention by Colin McGinn, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. McGinn wrote a book entirely based on this notion, titled ""Mindfucking: a critique of Mental Manipulation.""
He says, ""Delusion is the general result, sometimes insanity. How mind fucked are you? It's hard to say from the inside, but being aware of the phenomenon offers at least some protection.""
And so here I am, not being vulgar but rather an informed columnist creating awareness.
The perpetrator, you ask? Well, there are actually 16,000 of them on campus right now. (Drum roll please…) I reveal to you, the professors themselves! Yes, my friends, these qualified and ever-so-trustworthy bundles of knowledge are out to mindfuck you. Believe it or not, they prey most during midterm and finals week, allowing them to disguise exploitation in the form of exams! These illicit individuals live for brain-bending Scantron tests.
I picture them smoking a cigar, relaxing in their lavish home library, surrounded by piles of priceless leather-bound books, sitting in their high back leather chair, slowly rubbing their hands together and maliciously grinning. Periodically, they cackle at their computer screen and take a swig from the tumbler of Glenlivet sitting next to them. All the while knowing their students are feverishly studying and worrying about the exam only fuels their lusty fire for multiple-choice testing. As they methodically stroke their coarse, grey beards they are thinking up millions of ways to screw over their students.
The day of the exam, professors watch as the naïve, overly-prepared students frantically pack into the lecture hall. ""Sit every other seat and use a number two pencil"" are the instructions inscribed on the black board, even though the professors silently laugh when writing these because they know absolutely nothing will help their innocent victims.
Yes, you know exactly what I am trying to illustrate—the questions that you look at and ask yourself, ""Did we actually ever learn this?"" More often than not, you didn't, yet you go back and forth on the ""most appropriate"" answer to the question and you never succeed in finding it.
Or what about those questions with the word ""not"" in them? The professor purposely writes those to mindfuck you! And they SERIOUSLY piss me off! For example: Which of the following has not contributed greatly to human agriculture? Nobody in their right mind actually talks like that in real life so why the hell is it okay to put it on a test? The professor is knowingly trying to screw me over and loving every second!
Yet, if you did actually ""learn"" the material, and you find yourself answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test it is downright petrifying. Unintentionally, you start thinking ""This can't be right, there is no way ALL of these answers to the ten true/false questions are true."" You go back and forth with yourself, erasing and re-filling in the little bubbles, because you think that there is no way your professor would put all true statements on the exam. Well, guess what innocent little peer of mine, you professor is messing with your mind! Turns out, he put nothing BUT true statements on the test. Bummer.
Perhaps your teacher isn't the Scantron type, eh? So you may be one of those 300 students enrolled in J201? Those students who diligently studied all six essay questions, only to watch the professor march up the cement stairs and casually toss the die into the air that determines their fate, huh? No pressure at all, right? Just a complete mind fuck. Not to mention the time you wasted studying.
Unfortunately I have nothing in the way of good news or uplifting phrases for all you victims, because quite frankly there is nothing you can do about it. Professors are going to continue to mind fuck and manipulate the shit out of you and naturally, you will feel resentment. I guess there is one positive spin on this whole thing; At least you will do the walk of shame in your own clothes, not looking like a train-wreck and (hopefully) you won't be hungover.
