Be Proud Of Yourself, But Know Your Limits

As the great actor Michael Caine once said to the great comedian Steve Martin in the underrated comedy "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," "All I'm saying is: know your limitations, Freddy. You are a moron." That, my friends, is the simple request I make today. If you are ever made aware of the fact that you have the vocabulary of a pelvic bone, please adjust your speech accordingly. There's a guy in my Critical Thinking class who does not appear to be blessed with this knowledge. In fact, I think he thinks he's a genius. One day, he was talking about some moral dilemma (you'll notice this is a pattern. Whenever I write something about an occurance in class, the actual educational content will have mysteriously been lost in my memory. This is for two reasons: 1) I'm taking easy classes that don't require such peripherals as "thought" or "attendance," and 2) I have the attention span of a tsetse fly). Where was I? Oh yeah. This guy was talking about some moral problem, and he used the word "ethnocentric" in a context that was perfect for the word "narcissistic" or possibly "egomaniacal." "Ethnocentric," however, was NOT a good word choice. I have a feeling that the professor, myself, and two other people were the only ones who actually caught this flagrant error, and that scares me even more than the use of the word did. The worst part is, this guy and I usually find ourselves in total agreement when we discuss certain things as a class, so now I'm worried that I'll look like an idiot when I make statements that are indicative of an opinion that is sympathetic to his.