So we Dartmouth students, like any other community or society, have our own lingo. There are some words in this lexicon that are commonly used at college campuses across the nation, like "pong," "dude" and "damn-is-it-freakin-time-to-get-up-already?" Other terms are peculiar to this campus alone, such as "BlitzMail" and "Parkhurst" as a verb. The phrase that I'd like to examine now is possibly a nationwide phenomenon, or possibly a Dartmouth-centered circumstance; I am too lazy to investigate the matter in any great depth. Anyway, the phrase is this:
"I feel like "
Sound familiar? It should. Every Dartmouth student utters this phrase on a daily basis, and I unfortunately am no exception. Whenever we are called upon to express our opinion, we preface our statement with this weak-willed introduction, as in the following: "I feel like Tolstoy is trying to tell us in this particular passage that we should have more bran in our diet," or "I feel like we should go to Food Court tonight and get tuna melts," or "I feel like you've made a valid point here, but I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you completely, and I feel like you should never speak again because I feel like you are a total idiot."
What's going on here? Whatever happened to our old friend "I think that " or even just expressing ourselves outright? "You are an absolute moron." Beautiful in its simplicity, isn't it?
But we shy away from forthrightness. We are afraid to speak our minds without beginning with a disclaimer: "Just to warn you, this is my opinion, and so be cautious to the fact that you may be offended or even disagree with my point of view." On paper, we are less likely to suffer from this hesitation --- the fiery columns and letters to the editor that The Dartmouth's Op-Ed page has seen can attest to that. But writing is, of course, a less confrontational approach than speaking our minds in person, which involves facing directly those whom we wish to become enlightened by our opinions. Whenever we actually have to look someone in the eye and tell him or her what's on our mind, we suddenly resort to "I feel like "
I will admit that there are a few venues where this kind of hedging is appropriate. One such place is the Creative Writing workshop, where writers' babies are on the proverbial chopping block, and where one cruel word about a piece can send its author into a depressed oblivion. I remember almost jumping into the Connecticut when a humorous odyssey that I presented to one class was dismissed as an imitation of the movie "Office Space." On second thought, "I feel like " wouldn't have softened the blow then, either.
What would it be like if everyone started acting as hesitant as Dartmouth students do in expressing their views?
For one thing, our professors would lose their credibility. I can't picture going into Modern British Drama and hearing Professor Saccio say, "I feel like Shaw was kind of trying to convey what I feel like is a social message here." Or the famed Professor Rassias -- would his star have risen quite so high if he had qualified his language? How would drill instructors be told to teach their charges? "Je me sens comme 'regarder!'" (finger snapping) The President of this great nation, George W., would sound even more incoherent than usual: "I feel like America should not tolerate acts of what I feel like are terrorism Osama bin Laden, I feel like you should give yourself up!"
Idiosyncrasies of language usually derive from the environment their creators are living in. Thus "BlitzMail" has become such a vital part of our vocabulary because it is an essential piece of our environment; what Dartmouth student would survive without BlitzMail? Witness the dozens of public terminals, those shrines to Blitz, scattered across the campus. Blitz is woven into the core of our lives at this school; in the same way, so must the mentality of "I feel like " The inevitable conclusion to this reasoning must be, then, that here at Dartmouth we learn to stifle our thoughts behind a mask of gentility. It must be too shocking for the egos of our peers to be challenged directly by a viewpoint different from their own. What if, instead of saying "I feel like this author is using a superficial veneer to hide the ill-conceived nature of his arguments," I said to you, "This author is full of crap." Would my Dartmouth ID be taken away? Would your world crumble?
Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, our individual opinions mean nothing, and the relativistic way of the universe holds true, and there is no good and no evil and we are nothing but a bunch of cell collections waiting to be smashed by fortune's bootheel. However, I, for one, will continue to hope that my misinformed ideas about life, truth and so on are worth at least a moment's consideration, and I will express them without an apologetic preamble. I hope you will too, for surely you're thinking far deeper things than I am. Let's speak our minds without hesitation. That's what I feel like doing.
