Backpack paradox

[xmatt]

Last year in Gottschalk's class we talked about how religions sometimes have "empty rituals" that people just do because they've always done them. Imagine that academia is a religion, since it basically is. When I go to my final exam in a few minutes, I carry my backpack with me. It is an empty ritual because it has no purpose. I am not

Comments

[blueavenger]

this is entirely accurate, except that my empty ritual has been perverted. In my highschool one is not allowed to bring ones backpack to class, but as a girl i can bring some sort of tote and claim that it is a purse. So i will bring a tote thing and call it a purse, but fill it with far too many pencils and my physics notebook, just for fun

[retributionaura]

Wednesday I left my backpack in the SGA office since all I needed was a pen for my Greek Myth exam.
I felt so out of place not having a backpack that I was in fact quite uncomfortable not having participated in the ritual.

[retributionaura]

ps got chalk lol

[worded]

I think this aspect of academia is now completely inextricable from the rest of my life. I do not own a purse, but I own a small messenger bag similar to the bag I used throughout high school and college. Aside from my wallet and keys, this bag contains one notebook/journal in progress, one identical blank journal (I guess in case I think of some new story paradigm that needs an entirely new physical setting), pens, one "modern, fun" book (today Norwegian Wood), one "old, serious" book (Sense and Sensibility), and one "neutral" book I have not begun in case I am trapped in some situation in which I finish both the previous books (Nausea). I bring these same things everywhere, regardless of situation, regardless of the fact that I am no longer in school at all. It is complete ritual, and now that I write this out I realize it is completely stupid. Thanks.

[kessel]

So, so, so true.