I am an obsessive person. I pick some time period usually, or some school of philosophical thought, obscure film genre, art movement, etc, and I study the crap out of it before I move on to another topic. I have to know everything I can, and it's always been that way. I don't know how many children in elementary school do this, but I do. When I became proficient enough at reading in about first grade, I spent the library hours looking up all the books I could for a specific topic. I wasn't interested in the picture books or the fiction; I wanted straight facts (or speculations).
I think one of my first scholastic endeavors was the study of paranormal phenomena. Actually, I dare say that my interest in the paranormal has held the longest, always standing prominent whilst other interests have waxed and waned. I remember having a particular interest for some time in spontaneous human combustion. I had gotten to the point where I was familiar with the more notorious cases of SHC. One book had gone into detail about the demographics of this phenomena, and I was terrified that my mother would suddenly go up in flames one day since, according to this source, she fit the profile perfectly.
Studying the paranormal led into a period of fixation on sea tragedies, namely that of the Titanic. This had nothing to do with the movie being released in 1997. I was in second grade when I first came across the disaster. I don't even remember the trigger, but for years it was all I wanted to read about until the movie came out. I think I was in sixth grade when the movie caught everyone's attention. There were girls in my class who would try to compete with me as the expert on early twentieth century ship sinkings since they all saw the movie four times. I begged my dad to take me to see it, but he wasn't about to let me into a PG13 film. I had to wait for the video, and that was after I'd decided that it wasn't worth it. Those stupid girls had ruined it, and I was more interested in Greek mythology by then.
Greek mythology was one of my better phases. It overlapped for quite some time, battling the Titanic for my academic affections for a long time until the aforementioned Cameron flick. I took that to more of an extreme, studying Greek society, government, history, though I did skip philosophy. It was good preparation for the Greek Festival at my new middle school. Each class was assigned to a city state, and each city state would choose representatives for the academic decathlon. We spent all afternoon sitting in a classroom answering questions while the other kids ran around outside in bedsheets. I placed third in thirty, though I'm sure alot of those kids just wanted to go out and play.
Other topics of personal study included: Anne Frank, The French Revolution, Shakespeare, Adolf Hitler, cryptozoology, The American Revolution, The Civil War, Adolf Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, World War II, Vlad Tepes, Elizabeth Bathory, The Byzantine Empire, The Gauls, Tolkien, English history, Arthurian legends, Walt Disney, Wall Street, the Middle Ages, the Borgia family, etc. It wasn't until the Harry Potter books that I started to find myself attracted to more fiction. I've come to dislike fiction for the most part. I'm attempting to read through the classics. I need a good overview of Western literature, and I feel as though my knowledge is lacking.
As I grow older too I realize that I have missed out on so many good sources on previous fixations. I never did actually read Homer until I was older, although I would have liked to. My early encounters with Shakespeare were from graphic novels based on his plays rather than the scripts themselves. Having someone to guide my studies would have been very helpful, and I think I would have ended up somewhere very different today. I feel inadequate in many respects. Though in this life I don't suppose it will be possible to read everything I need to to feel academically sound. There's always more to be read and known. I hope there is a next life, and that I may spend it in deep thought.
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