A Disturbing Thought

I've already learned something about myself in the week I've been at University: my brain doesn't work in the way I thought it did. I read "Wuthering Heights" last month, knowing it was one of the first books we would have to study, and coming back this week to think about it a little more, with a view to being the generally acknowledged superstar of the seminar, I realised I could remember hardly anything specific about the book. So I started reading it again. And saw in it loads of incidents and details I had forgotten. Including really significant ones like Catherine's appearance as a ghost calling at the window during a snowstorm early on in the story.

I have gone through life presuming I was some sort of undiscovered genius; but these days I'm beginning to wonder if I might not be a bit of a moron. At the very least my brain needs rigorous training if it has a snowball's chance in Tripoli of ever genuinely understanding anything. How can you write if you can't read? What do I really know about how anybody constructs a novel or a poem if I skim over everything I read like I've been fired from a catapult over a giant sheet of ice?

It seems University came just in time.