Reading journals

Tom is teaching the memoir and imagination class at BYU, and he's also substitute teaching two or three times a week, so I offered to read the journals for him.  What strikes me is that everyone, and I do mean everyone, feels like a slacker half the time.  We are uncommonly critical of ourselves.  

This must be human.  What is pathetic is that it never goes away.  You get older, but you're still a slacker.  It hardly matters what you've accomplished, there's always room for self-criticism. 

 Did cave people feel this way or is this what we call civilized thinking?  Did cave people stare at the stars and think, "Geez, I spent way too much time looking at the fire this week," or I should have been killing a tiger instead of cave painting.  I'm such a caveman."

Anyway, the writers in Tom's class are so earnest and young and worried about their standing in the universe.  It's a bittersweet read.