Dan, I agree whole-heartedly with your observation that we tend to (over)analyze everything. My dreams aren’t chemical reactions taking place within the brain whilst I sleep. They are subtle hints at my subconscious and I should pay close attention to them. Yes on the movies and tv shows, as well! No one wants to watch tv with me because I analyze every little facial expression and piece of dialogue as if it were the Bible. I tend to ruin movies by deciphering what is going to happen based on not-so-subtle foreshadowing and general gut feelings. It’s a problem, really, but I love it.

Great post!!
Kayla

Also, I have noticed that most English majors share this problem with me. We cannot help but analyze any form of narrative. This of course includes the usual prose and poetry but also movies, tv shows, stories people tell us, our own dreams. Regardless of the narratives quality or intent we are assigning it meaning. We just can’t help ourselves.

And really? I can’t spell, hense the incorrect word choice. It came up correct in the spell check, and this whole post was written 20 minutes before class last year. And my eye tends to skim over words… If they sound right, they must be right. Hense why it took me three reads to try to figure out which misspelling you were talking about, since nothing is misspelled.

“When our backpacks gape open, one will catch site of whatever books are needed for that day’s classes”

Still haven’t bothered to teach you how to spell yet, eh?

i’m guilty of all of them.

I’m an engineer too and I know just what you mean. I’ve always been in charge of editing and streamlining the project documents. I joke about how engineers have a required university course on how to forget every grammar rule (along with how to forget and misunderstand the humanities).

A lot of these points apply to a large number of majors. I see it in engineering all the time!