David Foster Wallace gave an extremely memorable speech at a Kenyon University Graduation. He began with a story saying, “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How's the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’"(This Is Water p.1) He explains that “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”(This Is Water p.1) With the story as a backdrop, he argues that the significance of liberal arts education isn’t about learning how to think, but is …show more content…
I thought the speech was brilliant, and I actually printed off a copy of it to keep so I could look over it every once in a while. Monotony was a huge problem for me for the majority of my life, especially in school. You see, I have always been an avid reader. I still read books nowadays, just not as often because of a lack of time. As a child, I would read history, science and fiction books for fun. This helped me an amazing amount in primary education. I read at an above college level when I was 8. I read college level history, fiction books such as Star Wars, Robinson Crusoe, The Red Badge of Courage and Lord of the Rings, and I already understood basic concepts in biology. I even read my mother’s A&P book while she was in medical school at age 13. This was a trend that continued until I started playing soccer seriously my freshman year in high school and had less time on my hands. Because of this vast amount of knowledge I absorbed as a kid, I excelled in all of my subjects to the point that they were all like a pointless review for me. I never really had to study for anything, and I was a straight A student. I was extremely bored with doing the same routine year after year. Then I signed up for Dual Credit at Freed-Hardeman, because I figured it would be just like another advanced class at the high school. I had the shock of a lifetime, in a good and bad way. The classes were way harder than I expected, and I got a B or below on the