Try as Gerety & Co. might, there is one thing an Amherst education cannot provide: the singular, life-changing experience of being an idiot. Sure, we were all humbled the first day of our Freshman Orientation when they sat us down in Johnson Chapel and read the list of brilliant overachievements already accomplished by our future classmates, who were all smarter, brighter and more disciplined than we could ever hope to be. (I have yet to meet a single one of these people: to be honest, I think the Office of Admission makes them up to ensure our statistics beat Williams'). And the subtleties of organic chemistry, the torturous phrasings of "The Remembrance of Things Past"-or their equivalent in whatever course of study we are pursuing-have driven us all to tears, to banging our heads against the wall and, finally, to TAP.

But the typical Amherst student is gifted with so much extra gray matter that, in the long run, these are mere minor lapses, quickly absorbed by the functioning of our superior brains. They only bother eggheads like us. The rest of the world, the real world out there, could not give a damn. To them, we're smart. And that's a shame, because by remaining intelligent we're depriving ourselves of exposure to an entire realm of human experience.

That realm is called stupidity, and few, if any, of us at Amherst have had to struggle with it. Though, in principle, suckers for a good sob story, the admissions officers do not accept dumbasses-barring a few errors every year, of course-no matter how sorry their plight of idiocy, though paradoxically it is the very plight a quality school like Amherst might be expected to remedy.

I had a brief stupid stage myself around the time I was four or five, but I grew out of it. After that, I suffered only sporadic bouts of stupidity, usually brought on by alcohol; though, unfortunately, I can't blame the fiasco that was my eighth birthday party on the latter, since, at that point, I was going to A.A. meetings and had been dead sober for weeks.

Then I came to France; and here, thanks to my inability to speak fluently, I have rediscovered my latent stupidity and made great strides towards developing its potential. Language, as the cornerstone of logic and communication, is probably the greatest single measure of human social intelligence, and its impoverishment is a surefire shortcut to the land of the dense. Thanks to my still-uncertain grammar and limited familiarity with all things French, I have embarked upon a remarkable process of self-exploration. As a result, I have been set back years and transformed my mind. Once comparable to a flourescent lantern in its radiance, it has been transformed into a flickering, low-wattage lightbulb that can scarcely illuminate the path of my next action.

When roaming the streets, I feel less like an intelligent and capable 20-year-old than like a not-very-bright child who is also somewhat hard of hearing. I stare blankly at people when they talk to me and always ask them to repeat themselves at least once. During multiple explanations I ceaselessly nod and grin like the fool that I am, straining to catch the individual words in the remarkably quick flow of conversation. I start to do something-usually the wrong thing-according to what I think someone has just told me to do, and have to be corrected again. I don't always have the energy for this, so there are times when I simply walk away wearing a smile pasted on my face to mask my bewilderment, leaving my interlocutor no doubt as perplexed as I. Sometimes, on lazy days I just pretend to be mute, shaking my head sadly and pointing to my throat like Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," or just pointing to the clothing on the rack in a department store, and then to my wallet.

Not all of my stupidity stems from inexperience with language, of course. Some of it is just the result of being a stranger in a strange land. In particular, French civil servants, being the warm and welcoming people that they are, have been happy to encourage my feelings of idiocy. For instance, this week at the police station, the woman who called my name after I had waited for two and a half hours snapped at me as I walked up to the counter. "Where have you been!?! I've called you 10 times already!" she said. Dimly aware that she was displeased (remember, I'm stupid), I apologized and replied that I hadn't heard her. She thrust a piece of paper into my hand. I asked her what it was. Without delay, the woman, hereafter to be affectionately referred to as "that B%*&@!," said "Guess!" and indicated that I go away. It dawned on me that what I held in my hand was an appointment for a medical examination, necessary for my residence permit, but impossible to keep, since I had class then. I asked her if I could go at another time. "No, you're going to miss your class," said that B%*&@!, with an air of final dismissal.

I slunk out of the station feeling elated, of course, at having encountered, like a true tourist, my first taste of that rudeness for which the French are legendary. But I was also in a deeply thoughtful mood for I realized that, during almost my entire exchange with that B%*&@!, I'd had no clue of what was going on, why she had such a rod up her ass or even why I was at the station in the first place.

And how often at Amherst had I been so confused? Probably never-not even after the long bouts of drinking that, ironically, cause me to babble in French much more readily and might even have been useful in producing a few swear words that day. All of this simply underlines the educational importance of being stupid for at least once in your life. It's an experience I highly recommend, not only because stupidity loves company, but because of the tremendous opportunity for personal growth it affords. It will leave you with a new comprehension, or rather lack of comprehension, that will change you for good, adding another facet to your existence that allows the dim to shine along with the bright.

Anyone can learn to be smart, but imagine being able to put down on your job application to Goldman-Sachs that you learned to be stupid. That will be something to set you above (well, below) the Amherst crowd-something to be proud of.