Handshaking was not the sort of event at which victory was possible. The end of term meeting with one’s tutors (sometime in the presence of the college’s Master) was the sort of thing where survival was the best that could be hoped for. The aim was to get out unscathed.
Mission Accomplished, I thought when the Master cleared his throat and pronounced my efforts very satisfactory. “Anything else?”.
An “ahem” to my right. That didn’t sound good.
“Yes?”
“I have become concerned, Master,” the Ancient Historian started, glasses half-way down his nose, impish glint in his eye, “ that Dr X is letting Mr Slater get away with a bit too much” (You were always referred to in the third person).
“Oh dear.”
“So I have arranged for him to see Mr Y for his Greek History next term. And I have asked him to sit on him.”
A smile. On the Master’s face. Not mine.
Great. That sounds like fun.
And so it was, each tutorial an hour-long exercise in revealing that my intellect would shame a particularly slow amoeba.
Decades have passed since then. The scars have, mostly, healed, but I still think of it from time to time. Do such things still happen? Or has the advent of tuition fees changed the relationship between tutor and tutee? Are academics quite so keen to “sit” on those paying their wages and are students quite so respectful of those who have become, in effect, service providers?
I suspect they probably are, even if academics have become a bit softer over the decades. For knowledge still brings status, even if it is accessible at the click of a button. Children regard their parents as omniscient (at least, until they regard them as idiots) and the habit of looking up to the knowledgeable never entirely leaves us. Which is why brands like to have their products endorsed by “experts”.
Expertise, though, comes in all shapes and sizes. Mr Y was an expert in Greek History, Einstein was an expert in physics. Pick a sphere of human activity, and you will find someone claiming to be an expert in it.
Even the completely mundane.
I came across a video recently of an influencer. She was sitting in a restaurant by a lake. A pizza was in front of her. Italy or Switzerland then, but these days, who knows? She leant towards the camera. “Do you want to know how I find somewhere good to eat when I’m travelling?”
Of course we did. We all like to eat and although we all eat McDonald’s, we don’t like to admit to eating McDonald’s. Especially to ourselves. Globalisation is a virtue when it allows us to travel, but paradoxically once we arrive, it instantly becomes a vice. We want local things for local people. The words “darling little bistro” are a mantra at middle-class dinner parties in September.
It was time for the big reveal. She leant in. “I ask a local.”
Who would have thought it?
Well, anyone who’s ever seen an Anthony Bourdain show for a start. His most famous quote (the one he never actually said) starts with “Eat at a local restaurant”, after all.
This is not to mock the influencer in question. She seems to have a nice lifestyle – nicer than most Ancient Historians certainly. Nor is she unique.
I get offered videos from the “corporate girl” offering me tips on how to dress for the office even though neither of us works in fashion. A GP advises me on how to balance my busy life as a doctor and a mum to young children. My medical conditions she leaves well alone. Countless people tell me what to make for dinner, often reminding me that McDonald’s isn’t that bad an option. Really. You want to see some of the stuff.
There is obviously a market for this. Not everyone, I imagine, sees it like me: as a strange new form of performance art. We are a curious species, always on the look-out for new information. But we are also a lazy species, always thinking paradise is just one life-hack away.
Where there is a market, people will be willing to fill it. The earnings are presumably attractive. There are branding and promotion opportunities – many videos feature product placement even the Bond producers would consider too much. And there is the status.
For the influencer is a teacher. Leading their ignorant pupils to a better life. Not by “sitting” on them, but by showing them the right way. I ask a local where to eat. You should too. I put this balm on my face. You should too. This is how I live my life. You should too. Their videos are displays of expertise, shared with a lucky few, elevating those who make them.
But often there are no credentials behind this. No doctorates earned or fellowships awarded. Expertise is self-assessed, like a degree bought off the internet. For most of them are just experts in being themselves.
As we all are. The only difference is that most of us don’t pump the fact out over the internet. Nor do we record our every waking moment.
Should we condemn their presumption? Should we pity their frequent confusion of banality for profundity? Should we secretly admire their chutzpah in actually doing what we all think we could do – which of us honestly believes other people’s lives would not be better if they could just be a bit more like us? Which of us would not hold ourselves out as a guru of savoir-vivre? Particularly when no-one can disagree.
The intellectual traffic with Mr Y went mainly one way. But not exclusively. After one tutorial which had degenerated into “Oh yes it is”, “Oh no it isn’t” with some Ancient Greek thrown in, he admitted he was wrong about an obscure point. A true teacher knows they still have something to learn.
The next week he made it clear his pupil did too.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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