The Read from This Side of Suite 711 (14)

SECOND SKETCH: THREE Bs to “BELONGING” (cont.) 

https://haroldlounge.com/2012/11/09/badge-lacks-courage-to-educate/

“B Two = Badge lacks courage to educate” (cont.)  

Since the post consists of Realist’s “half-baked” thoughts, it is misleading for Realist to use the pronoun “we”; therefore, the pronoun “I” has been inserted into the following:

“Graduation gowns: . . . I say graduation clowns. . . asked to stand in the lobby of our building wearing graduation regalia.  [I’m] turning our academic institution into a circus.  [I] appear to be appealing to the lowest common denominator of attention. ‘Hey kids, look over there! It’s Graduate Gary! Let’s go talk to him about graduation!’  ‘Kids, kids! It’s Betty with a badge! Let’s ask her about semester schedules!’  With [my] words [I] say [I] want to have a frickin’ ‘world class institution’; with [my] actions [I] say the complete opposite.”

Realist writes, “I don’t need to be tagged in order to continue assisting [my] students in their academic experience.  My professionalism will let students know they’re at a community college, right?” 

The tag/badge that Realist desires is the one that will signify an essential, worthwhile quality about Realist, one that readers/viewers will see and respond to positively.  More to the point regarding Realist’s enormous need for belonging, it is in the responses and faces of the readers/viewers that Realist looks for and confirms Realist’s own sense of self.

The entire post demonstrates this.

However, the desired tag/badge is chimerical because Realist’s sense of self is externally referenced: it is a tiny, fleeting image reflected on the pupils of the eyes of those who gather before the attention-seeking Realist-as-spectacle.  The nature of this uncertain, spectacle-dependent sense of self shows through in the fact that Realist asks a question instead of making a statement when Realist writes, “My professionalism will let students know they’re at a community college, right?”