Two Quacks

As I sit on my couch before the world has really rubbed the sleep from her eyes writing, I cannot help but feel older, more genuinely in control, happier, and freer. In some ways it feels like the only way I have been able to really grow up (even after two years of working full-time and a lifetime of taking care of myself) has been to revisit this primal scene (forgive me, Freud, for not making this about sex) where I was most powerless and from which I have to regain power.
My primal scene is academia. When I went to college, I felt totally lost and totally alive for the first time. My peers were markedly more intelligent than I. They knew who Heidegger was, could describe the intricacies of the Spanish Civil War, and most importantly, they were confident. They knew that they belonged in the halls of my undergraduate college. They knew that they had every right to ask for more, to challenge their professors, and to write the papers they wanted to write. For a long time, I mimicked them. Thinking back on it now, it reminds me of a duckling trying to imitate a chicken. Sticking my head out, puffing out my chest, bobbing my head back and forth--I looked almost like an academic. To the untrained eye, I was all I needed to be. But if you looked closer, I didn't have the right feathers. In undergrad, I waited until the last minute to write every single paper I ever turned in. I will blame a bit of that on the block plan, but I will place a lot more blame on me. There was this sense that if I didn't really give my all, if I didn't really spend a lot of time on my work, then no matter what the grade or feedback, it couldn't really speak to my experience. I hadn't really tried, so I couldn't really be hurt. Call it self-preservation. Call it immaturity. Call it what you will, but this was my primal scene.
Years later, I am back in that milieu--the place where I was least qualified and most scared. I still have moments where I am terrified, but not like before. I am re-playing my primal scene and things are going differently. Instead of waiting until the last moment, I have already started my final papers (which are due in December). Instead of giving 70%, I am giving one hundred. And the most surprising thing of all is that I'm still alive. I'm risking everything. I am going for broke and I'm ok! The comments that come back on my papers, proposals, or presentations are reflecting that. It's as if I'm really showing up for the first time, and with all the risk that entails, it also offers a huge pay-off. Maybe I couldn't really understand the gambling metaphor before visiting Vegas, but I'm not folding. I belong here. And if I'm not smart enough, if my ideas aren't good enough for me to be a professor and an academic, I am sure as hell gonna find out. Hiding from the truth has never served me personally.
Forgive me the double metaphor, but it seems to work in my mind. This primal scene is playing out differently because I want it to do so. I am not a duckling imitating a chicken. I am a duck. I can't crow and I don't know how to scratch the ground the right way. But, I can swim. And I've never seen a chicken swim.