COLUMN What About Bob?

Author: Bob Wainwright

"April is the cruellest month," T. S. Eliot once wrote. Needless to say, Eliot never spent January at Middlebury taking Comps.

Ironically, most Middlebury students have no idea what comps is beyond a word that certain people roam around campus uttering when asked about their J-term. And it doesn't help that most people actually taking comps right now have no idea what it is either. If you don't believe me, just ask one of them the next time you hear someone groaning about not having left the library in 20 days. I guarantee the answer will begin with, "Ummm..."

Perhaps a comps taker may drum out a few terse sentences-something to the effect of, "We basically review all of the important literature ever written in English. And then we get tested on it."

But push the poor kid further, and his logic will inevitably falter.

"You can't possibly review all American literature."

"No, you're wrong, I'm already half-way through."

"No, you're not. You just lied."

"B-b-b-but I..."

"Right now, you're wishing you were good at math in high school, aren't you?"

"Uh-huh."

The ultimate irony of Comps is that, like Fox's Joe Millionaire, in which Joe most certainly is rich, thereby making the viewer the butt of a grand hoax, people taking Comps always manage to convince themselves that reviewing every last bit of consequential literature is possible in 25 days. But how do the masterminds behind Comps manage to pull off this grand deception every year? It's simple. Their secret is self-contained. Because no one in their right mind is ever going to admit to freaking out for an entire month, musing over the concepts of nature, community, death and eternity, only to realize that all that Comps really entails is telling two professors who you think will win the Academy Award for best actor.

So that, my friends, is why I myself have not reviewed a single text this January besides the menu to Panda House. Like Trista from ABC's The Bachelorette, I know what's going to happen even if everyone else is clueless.

My proof lies in the very texts, which are supposedly required of me. For instance, Wordsworth writes, "Up! Up! My Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double." And in "Nature," Emerson writes, "To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone." Clearly, by telling us to read and understand such authors, the Powers That Be are secretly telling us to stop reading and go skiing!

You probably think I'm ludicrous. But come Friday, I'll be the one laughing, because the secret of Comps lies in a single answer, and it's Daniel Day-Lewis of Gangs of New York.