the disease is duly named.

[timed writing for the national council of teachers of english achievement in writing award competition 2006. marks the initial diagnosis of the afflicted.]

Do I strike you as the type of person who writes long, dry editorials on overplayed subjects? Am I always full of bright new ideas? Do I take irrational, offensive points of view just to provoke those around me? Am I a rabid liberal? A hardheaded conservative? The clothes I wear, the classes I take, the people I associate with – have any of these things molded your perception of me?

When was the last time you doubted your own convictions? Where did those convictions come from, in any case?

What in the world can change your mind now?

I, for my own part, don’t know if my cardinal virtue has a real name, a name you could find in the dictionary. It is self-doubt; it is intellectual curiosity; it is open-mindedness; it is the unknown little someone that sits in the back of the human mind, jumping up and down and screaming at the top of his lungs:

“Why!? Why!?”

For the sake of communication, let’s call it gadfly syndrome.

If, up until now, the words I have written have been an annoyance to you – a sort of incessant buzzing in your ear, if you will – then you are not alone.

The original patron of my cardinal virtue was named Socrates, sometimes referred to as the Gadfly for his tendency to flit about the heads of respectable Greeks (who were minding their own business, thank you very much), voicing the concerns of the strange little fellow making a ruckus in the hollow of his skull. Socrates was an annoyance. He was, in fact, infuriatingly obnoxious; he asked too many questions. The government of Athens (Socrates’s old stomping grounds) eventually got so fed up with him and his antics that they executed him by means of hemlock wine.

I hope you will all be kind, and choose not to poison me. Socrates was a sight more obnoxious than I am, in any case, and quite a lot more persistent.

In a few remote locations, folks are still hearing the echoes of the philosopher’s buzz, and these places currently face an epidemic of gadfly syndrome. At colleges in Annapolis, Chicago, Southern Vermont, Santa Fe, and who knows where else, sufferers isolate themselves voluntarily from society at large; they live on complexes of green grass, relax in libraries furnished with dangerously comfortable couches, and are taught in seminar rooms lined with straight-backed, unforgiving wooden chairs.

Here, in the heart of all things unsettling to sensible people, the afflicted talk.

To some, who hear only buzzing, the sight and sound of it is truly appalling. All these people do is discuss, ramble and ponder; it seems like an infernal waste of time. The mission statement of one school is simply “to seek the truth.” What kind of mission is that? The truth won’t line your pockets; it won’t keep you warm at night; there’s nothing sensible about looking for the truth.

To which the afflicted answer: Well, what do you want to line your pockets for, anyway? Why do you want to be sensible? There’s nothing interesting, nothing noble about being sensible.

At which point the non-sufferer may or may not be overcome with the sound of a swarm of locusts descending upon the field of their thoughts, opinions and prejudices, and subsequently, that individual may or may not heave a sigh, roll their eyes, throw up their arms and trounce away to the real world.

I am stricken; it is too late for me. I am a sufferer of the gadfly syndrome, and I want to know why, why, why.

Not for a moment do I suggest that everyone be shipped off to academic quarantine; I don’t expect the world’s whole population to become so completely infected with the disease of intellectual curiosity as those select, strange people. If that were to happen, it seems to me that the world would cease to function as we know it altogether, and of course no sensible person wants that.

However. . .

I recall a day upon which a classmate of mine expressed, with utmost conviction, that there were not enough differences of opinion in the classroom to justify a discussion of “political issues” – since, after all, every single person in our town worships at the altar of the Democratic Party.

I would challenge that student to question that conviction, and to question the presupposition that the 25 young men and women in the room with him that day hold identical opinions, each and every one, on each and every political issue. I would clear out the desks in the classroom – just for a day or two, you understand – and replace them with a long, wooden table and straight-backed, unforgiving wooden chairs. It would be an awkward fit; usually, about twelve students sit at a table like that. Perhaps adjustments could be made – for a day or two.

And we would talk.

We would go where the conversation led us; we would wonder aloud about the things we wondered at silently every day. I think – granted, this is I, a sufferer of gadfly syndrome, thinking this – that one or two of us would be surprised at four or five others of us. Maybe we would even want to know more; maybe we would find ourselves seeking the truth; maybe our search would go on, even when the plastic desks and metal chairs returned to our classroom.

I would take a day and shatter some assumptions, ask some questions, demand some answers, and hey, maybe I would even get some.

I do not know if there is a name for such a day that one could look up in the dictionary. For ease of communication, we could call it Gadfly Day.