I learned very early on that when my mom says something is "interesting," it means she doesn't like it. This goes primarily for food, but also applies to clothes, movies, haircuts and boyfriends.
In my household, "interesting" is the last adjective you want to evoke; over the years it has gone from diplomatic to downright insulting, so you can imagine my shock when I arrived at Tufts and heard it aimed at professors and their scholarly texts approximately 87,324 times a day. The first time one of my classmates said it to a professor, I winced. The wincing has not stopped since.
Why is it that "interesting" is the only word Tufts students can come up with to preface a comment about class material? We are an intelligent, verbose and ostentatious crowd with an average SAT Verbal score somewhere in the low 700s. You'd think we could — and would be dying to — manage something a little more impressive. But instead, like that guy from freshman year you just can't stop hooking up with, we are stuck on that old standby: interesting. Every time I hear someone use it, I immediately care less about what they are about to say. In fact, my abhorrence of any one of my poor, unsuspecting classmates is directly proportional to how often they use the word. I am repulsed by the sound of it, and it turns out I'm not the only one.
Upon presenting my secret rage to others, I was met with enthusiastic agreement. Apparently, this horrible word-plague even transcends languages; nothing makes my friend Emma's blood boil like the word "interesante." Every person I've spoken to about the issue agrees: This has got to stop. I can't help but wonder how professors take it day after day. Do they feel patronized? Insulted? Lied to? Perhaps, like a bunch of clueless cuckolds, each believes that students reserve the word only for his or her classes. If this is true, then our faculty is seriously getting played.
But I think they recognize the pattern. Let's be honest, our professors collect Ph.D.s like I horde Dewick silverware; they are not a bunch who are easily taken in. They are just able to see past that godforsaken word to the content of what a student is saying, or else they appreciate the effort it took for someone to say something at all. Well, guess what? I'm not, and I don't.
I do understand why it happens. It's a crime that, like referring to the library as "the libes" or overusing the word "like," is as innocuous as it is infuriating, and we are all guilty of it. With the pressure to pipe up in class or risk losing participation points, in a caffeine-saturated academic environment that never sleeps and has rising standards of achievement, sometimes a half-observation, half-opinion made relevant by using everybody's favorite describing word is simply all we can muster.
But I know we can do better, and I have a feeling the key to ending this oppressive vocabulary regime lies in contradicting it. Say it with me, Tufts: "This article I just read entitled ‘Ancient Phoenician Boating and Sea Trade' was completely, mind-numbingly NOT interesting." There, feel better? It does not make you less intelligent to be less than compelled by something, and every reaction to information needn't be intrigue. Not all students can be riveted by everything they read or discuss in class. It wouldn't be normal, and it would make for an incredibly boring intellectual terrain.
So, the next time you are in class and feeling the same way about last night's reading that my mom felt about the pancake soup I made her for Mother's Day in '94, try saying what she meant instead of what she said. You might surprise yourself.
Jessie Borkan is a junior majoring in clinical psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.Borkan@tufts.edu.
