Maybe I'm Getting Even Dumber?

A coupla weeks ago it was announced that one's intellectual abilities reached a peak at age 22. I remember seeing this and thinking oh come on, I'm much smarter than I was at 22. Which is probably like Gary Coleman insisting he's way taller than he was at 12 years old.

But then as some of you know I have found a pile of my college papers et al and have perused them out of extreme gayness intellectual curiosity. And just now I'm looking at the Final Exam for my Literary Criticism class, a class I took when I was in fact 22 years old, and I see this is the exam:

In an essay no longer than 500 words, explain how either Aristotle or Alexander Pope would have interpreted this passage from Shelley as opposed to how either Northrup Frye or Adrienne Rich would have viewed the same passage.

I have no desire to read what I wrote as I'm sure it was atrocious/sophomoric, but in looking at my response I see that within the time allotted for the class I knocked out three pages for an answer. Which means that I looked at the question and then certainly SEEMED to know that the fuck I was talking about. Whereas if you asked me anything like this today, my head would fucking explode. I have no idea of who Frye or Rich even are, knowing me at this point I would "distract" the professor with about 300 words on "Shelley" being "Shelley Long," and in looking at it right now I don't think I even understand the question in the first place. And oh yeah - when I was 22 I actually had a girlfriend. Fucking christ.