at such a constellation of events , you took another drink and thought about proust ; you thought about everything except the idea of generating your own ideas , and going to yale became a sort of accomplishment in itself , whereas once it had just been preparation for actually going and doing work , now it was the end point of everything , the final culmination that justified your getting some highly paid sinecure , that meant you felt entitled for the rest of your life and that made you believe in the absolute primacy of your thoughts , your classification as an individual several orders up the evolutionary tree than mere homo sapiens .