Sandpaper

Caviat: I'd like to talk about college. Seem cliche? It is. Do I care? Only a little. I am in college, and that's what is affecting me right now, and so I'm going to talk about it, however self-interested that may sound. However, with some coaxing and a forgiving mind, this silly analogy could probably be read for all ages.

College life is a little like Sandpaper. Actually, it's quite a lot like sandpaper. They rub you down here. They rub off what you thought before. Almost daily you here words like "former misconception", and phrases like, "forget what they told you in school. This is what this particular phrase REALLY means." The expectations are rough, too; expectations from family, peers, teachers, etc. These expectations form the pressure that pushes the sandpaper hard into the skin of your spirit and drags it across. It's pretty harsh.
There's good sandpaper, though. I like to call good sandpaper the day-old stubble of a beard, or in lay terms, "5 o'clock shadow".  Mmmm. You with me, girls? That's the kind of sandpaper that can scratch an itch in your soul when it drags across the smooth surface of your own cheek.
Have you ever dragged a piece of sandpaper across human skin? I did once. It was with my dad's electrical sander. While it was whirring around in circles at dangerously high speeds, I ever so gently placed my fingertips to the spinning sandpaper, just for the experience. Friction is pretty incredible. There was no blood, but even the ghost of a touch to the sander took a layer of skin off of my fingers.
I can't imagine that having your immortal soul sanded is a pleasant experience. In fact, I feel fairly confident in stating that as a fact. It does not feel very good for the human spirit to be sanded down.

Query: Is it necessary?
This leads to other quandaries on the matter, such as: "If so, to what extent?" "How do we know when we've been 'sanded' enough?" "Is this a form of refinement, or torture, or both?" "Isn't there an easier way?" "Who decides when I'm finished?" "Why would we have to be sanded at all?" "Who thought up of this terrible sandpaper analogy anyway?", and on and on in a vicious cycle of age-old questions that have already been answered, but will forever be posed and reposed in various forms.
So maybe I do know the answer to sandpaper, (it's not 42, that's the meaning of life!) but that doesn't really stop the chafing.