Oh the horror, the shame!

This is how it began: Two months after my high school graduation I was on my way to Iowa, my boyfriend’s car full to the gunwales with our absolute-must-have possessions and essential going-off-to-college stuff. It was 1997, I’d just turned 18, and I’d been counting down (14,658 minutes exactly) to my vitally important escape from the prosaic and stale homogeneity that was life in Reno, Nev.

I knew my shit. Hell, I knew everything. And my ego, purring with contentedness, couldn’t wait to establish its indomitable position as The Greatest and Most Authoritative Ego In All the Land.

This was my time to show off my mad skills: an incomparable knowledge of essay writing, literature, chemical compounds, music and whatever else contributed to my inherent ability to accomplish any task with unmitigated success.

Naive, I know, and I was irrefutably unprepared for the fallout that came with my erroneously self-ascribed sense of prestige. I’ve retrospectively justified my obtuse and idiotic mindset: I had horrible high school teachers; my friends withheld the real truth; no one bothered to correct me; blah blah, but it doesn’t change the results. I didn’t know a damn thing. And my precious, precious ego? Demoted to “there’s nothing superior about you” status.

It was one hell of a kick to the solar plexus.

I wasn’t alone in falling on my ass. A classmate who’d been on the statewide, all-star varsity soccer team in highschool didn’t make the college squad because she wasn’t talented enough. The douchebag know-it-all who lived across the hall lost every debate before quitting the club.

The snooty and prissy principessa in “Intro to Literary Theory” (she wouldn’t condescend to speak up in class because she felt her classmates deserved the chance to accept the truth as she knew it), flunked the class because she thought her final essay didn’t require revision.

Even the I-do-everything overachiever (e.g., Tracy in Election), fell from first-chair violin to third-row, no-one-will-see-me play.

Everyone I knew felt the burn of shattered illusions. We discovered our true rank: plebeian.

And it will happen to you. It doesn’t matter how humble you are or how little vanity you possess, whatever pedestal you stand on will crumble to microfibers, finally revealed as an architecturally flawed, duct-taped cardboard soapbox.

Think that everything you say, write, do or create is infallible? Perfect? Pristine and above criticism or constructive revision? Wrong. And before you start shouting from the mountaintop that so-and-so botched everything, make damn well sure that your reasoning is accurate and based on concrete evidence.

Have the facts in hand, along with multiple sources to corroborate your opinions. Look around and get a good glimpse of your peers; I promise you’ll find that you weren’t the first person to have a flawless piece of writing rejected for publication.

Eventually you’ll see what I’ve seen time and time again: The inevitable demise of the nonpareil—the inflexible and narcissistic college-student ego. The real world will gut you, make pate of your bones and lay you flat.

Trust me; it happened to many of my college peers. And to me, of course. So here’s a piece of unsolicited advice: You don’t know half of what you think you know, and most of what you do know is but a fraction of what you should know. Don’t just react when someone says you “got it wrong”; take the time to do the research and have a sophisticated conversation on the issue.

Be cautious and don’t become a victim of your own inflated, overheated ego. Get over yourself and get used to the idea that you’ll make mistakes. Own up to them and move on. Wash, rinse, repeat.