Flashback Friday - The Time I Became One of THOSE Students......

I was a senior in college, and my friend from high school, Mack, and I were taking a course in Chaucer from Dr. Shaw.

A whole course in Chaucer. Ponder on that for a moment.

It must have been one hell of a scheduling nightmare, or I must have already taken every other course for an English major that didn't involve medieval poetry. I have no other explanation for why I would have voluntarily signed up for an entire course in Chaucer. Unless Mack peer-pressured me into it. He's the sole reason I was an English major in the first place. That and college calculus. And chemistry.

I don't remember a lot about Dr. Shaw. I remember her wearing a flower, either in her hair or on her blouse, and I don't remember whether it was a single occurrence or if she wore it all the time. I also remember that Mack would always turn to me in class and whisper, "Do you think she ever thinks about sex?" I had no idea what the right answer to that question was. Maybe he was referring to the flower.

The other thing I remember about Dr. Shaw was that I was terrified of her. She came across so stern and smart and knowledgeable and no-nonsense that I wouldn't have approached her on a dare. And I was a daredevil.

At the end of the semester, we had two (or was it three?) days of final exams. Exam periods were three hours per class, and the schedule was determined by what time your class was normally held. A 7:50 class (isn't that a dumb time to have a class?) might have the 8-11 slot, an 8:50 class might have the 12-3 slot, and so on. (I'm working on very poor memory of the quarter system, and almost every college in the free world has converted to semesters now, so I don't have anything reliable on which to base my examples.)

Many professors used the last day of classes to give their final exams, even though they weren't supposed to change the schedule. Professors who did that probably wanted to get their grades in (particularly those pesky English teachers, who gave such horrendous essay exams in the first place), and they may have wanted to get a jump-start on their short between-quarter vacations too. We didn't mind not having to show up for a 3-hour exam, and we were ecstatic if OUR breaks started a day (or two) early, so we didn't complain.

Dr. Shaw, however, threw a monkey wrench into the whole mess. She decided our final exam (over Chaucer, remember?) would be administered on the last day of classes (yay!), but it would still be a 3-hour exam (boo!).

Wait...what?

By doing that, she was completely ignoring anything we might have in our schedules beyond her class: other classes, jobs, a social life. If someone were unlucky enough to have Dr. Shaw for, say, a 2:00 class, and then someone else for a 3:00 class, then her plan did not allow for a student to attend that 3:00 class on the all-important (sometimes) last day of classes.

Personally, I had a job in the afternoons, and while it would have been a simple matter to rearrange my work schedule to accommodate that final exam, I disagreed with it on principle. I didn't think she should move the final exam to the last day of classes instead of the assigned day just because it fit HER schedule better, and then not take OUR schedules into consideration for the last day of classes.

So I called the chairman of the English department.

I know, right?

I've always thought it was significant that when I called to report my problem, the secretary asked what year I was. Perhaps if I had been a freshman instead of a senior, my message may never have been delivered.

I made the mistake of telling Mack what I had done, KNOWING he couldn't avoid looking my way if the phone call came up in class. But another student saved me.

When Dr. Shaw walked into class the next time, a blond-haired guy who was either a swimmer or a diver spoke up and said, "We're a little concerned by this final exam thing."

She retorted, "You're damn right you are. SOMEONE called the head of the department."

Don't look at me, Mack. Don't look at me, Mack. Don't look at me, Mack. Don't look at me, Mack.

I probably gave myself away, sitting there in the front row, because I DIDN'T look around and make eye contact with anyone else. Especially Mack.

Boy, was Dr. Shaw peeved. It had never crossed my mind that she might retaliate by creating a final exam that no one with an IQ less than 534 could pass, but that was water under the bridge at that point. The horse was out of the gate and charging down the backstretch. (Forgive the mixed metaphors. Dr. Shaw would probably crucify me for them.)

Dr. Shaw must have had some serious out-of-town plans, though, because her solution was still NOT to move the exam to its scheduled time, but instead to give us a take-home exam. I've heard horror stories about take-home exams in college and have always heard they are to be avoided like the plague, but it was fine with me. I didn't have to sit in a classroom for three hours, whether on the assigned day OR on the final day of classes, I didn't have to worry about Dr. Shaw finding me out, and I didn't have to wonder about her flower and whether or not she ever thought about sex while I was churning out some pithy remarks about Chaucer.

Looking back, I have mixed feelings about what I did. There may have been a better way to approach the problem, including going to Dr. Shaw during her office hours. But did I mention I was terrified of her? And in the late 70's and early 80's, students didn't have the kind of collegial relationships with their professors that I think are more common today. (Or perhaps that was just me. I still held professors up on a pedestal, something better than us mere mortals.) I was amazed the blond-haired swimmer/diver even had the nerve to speak up; but boy was I glad he did. Even if I HAD summoned the nerve to go to her office, I had the impression she wouldn't have changed her mind based on the opinion of one student. And we didn't have time to organize any type of group effort; exams were upon us.

I've tried to put myself in Dr. Shaw's position. It must have been embarrassing for her department chair to call her in and chastise her (if indeed he did), but to this day I think she was in the wrong.

I don't even remember what grade I got in that course. Now I'm curious, though, and I may have to go look up my undergraduate transcripts just to see if I got an "A" or a "B".

If I Could Do College Again.....

I try not to have too many regrets in my life. Still, if I had the opportunity to go back and do some things differently, and have (at least some of) the knowledge I have now, I might make different choices. Not necessarily wiser ones, mind you, but different.

I had just turned 17 in April when I graduated from high school. I felt compelled to go straight into college during summer quarter, which started just 10 days after my high school graduation. I'm not sure I would do that differently, because summer quarter was more relaxed and classes were smaller than the rest of the year. It gave me a chance to ease into college life without all of the 24,000 other students there. I became familiar with the bus system, and because it was summer quarter, there weren't many people watching when I sat for about 30 minutes at a bus stop waiting for a North-South bus. That particular bus stop was only for East-West buses. I can only imagine what the folks on those East-West buses thought when they kept pulling up to the stop and I kept not getting on the bus.

I don't think I would have gone EVERY summer, though, as I did. I finally took one quarter off, a winter quarter, after a painful break-up, but I went to school every summer. We had about a month off between the end of summer quarter and the beginning of fall, but I never took a summer off. It would have made a lot more sense financially, too. I was drawing social security after the death of my step-father, and they would keep paying me until age 22 (I think) or until I received my first degree (which I did at 20). My mother couldn't understand why I was in such a hurry. Looking back now, neither do I.

I THINK I would choose to live in a dormitory and experience more of college life, but I can't be sure about that one. I lived at home and commuted the 10 miles or so to school, so that meant I didn't meet as many people as I would have if I had lived on campus. I made a few friends, but none of those friendships turned into the lifelong relationships a lot of people have from college.

If I could go back and do it again, I would get into cycling while I was still in college and not wait until I was 31. That might also have led to my quitting smoking a lot sooner. It would have also saved me the $98 in parking tickets I had to pay my last quarter before they would let me have my diploma.

I would try harder to appreciate the learning process instead of going through the motions from quarter to quarter, collecting my credits and jumping through the hoops but never sure exactly what I was learning. I would take more classes I was truly interested in and not schedule them just because they fit my schedule. Believe it or not, I preferred 7:50 AM classes. I wanted to be finished by noon so I could work in the afternoons. My brain doesn't learn very well after lunch.

I would know myself better than to think I should even imagine traveling the road through a pre-med program and medical school. I would have chosen something like literature from the beginning, or perhaps physical fitness. Or Women's Studies. Or French. Or math. Or a double or triple major in some combination of all of them. Maybe I could have just gotten a degree in going to college.

I won't even talk about my social life or studying or bad relationships. I think those are all part of the college experience. Or maybe I just don't want to talk about them.

My First Apartment.......

Every now and then when I have to attend some function on campus (most likely involving football, gymnastics, or a spending spree at the campus bookstore), I pass the apartment complex where I lived for a while when I was in college.

I didn't live in a dorm or an apartment when I first started college. Our home was only about 10 miles from campus (at least where freshmen had to park....actual campus was another day's ride away.....or so it seemed), so I just commuted from home. It was cheaper that way, but I think I missed some of the college experience. I didn't meet a whole lot of new people, because there were so many of us from my high school there that we mostly just hung around together.

My mother moved to Atlanta for a while, and Katydid and I shared the house I had lived in since I was 12 years old. We split expenses, although I'm sure Katydid paid more than her fair share. I worked part-time, and I was able to pay my tuition because I drew Social Security after my step-father's death. Then Katydid got married, Mom moved home, and it was verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry tough to go back to living in "mama's house" again after being pretty much on my own.

She threatened to whip me one day (probably said she was going to "beat me half to death," her favorite phrase) because I didn't clean my room, and that was the final straw. I was 19 years old, for heaven's sake!

I went on my own and found an adorable little one-bedroom apartment not far from campus. I could ride a city transit bus to campus and avoid the trouble of looking for a parking place. I once tried to see how long I could go without moving my car. I made it two weeks, but the city buses didn't run on the weekends, at least not to the places I wanted to go.

I lived on the bottom floor of a two-story unit, in the apartment on the far right end. My apartment number was F-13, and it didn't bother me a bit. In fact, I don't remember even acknowledging the fact that I lived in number 13. It was pretty spacious, especially the one bedroom. There were two doors to the outside (a building code requirement, I think), but they were side by side. One opened into the living room, the other into the kitchen.

I didn't even tell my mother I was moving until I had signed the lease. My rent was around $200 a month, I think. I had to budget very carefully to pay all the bills and still afford my social life. I had no furniture except for what family members gave me. Mom actually came to my apartment and gave me my first television - a hand-me-down, of course, but I was proud to have it. We had never had cable before, but it was something I splurged on. We hooked the television up, and I immediately turned it to the Braves game. Mom was so proud that the t.v. worked. Then I said (because I never learned the art of keeping my mouth shut and/or being gracious), "Uh.....the Braves don't wear green."

My apartment building was on a busy street, but it backed up to a wooded area. I tried to save money by leaving the windows open at night when it wasn't too hot or cold, and the night noises sometimes made me uneasy. I wasn't normally a nervous person, but I imagined all sorts of evil folks hiding in the kudzu and jumping out to do me harm after dark.

I took a friend home very, very late one night, and when I was coming home to my apartment a car pulled in behind me. Then it turned on its blue lights. I almost peed in my pants on the spot. It was none other than Figment, in his brief stint as a police officer. He saw me driving home, and it was almost time for him to get off work. He laughed at having scared me, then he said he might drop by when his shift ended. I slept on the sofa all night with the lights on just hoping he would come by. (Don't we do STUPID stuff? Hello? Anyone out there?)

I was so proud of my little apartment. It wasn't luxurious by far, but it was all mine. I didn't have to clean it if I didn't want to (usually didn't), and I didn't have to answer to anyone else. I think every woman in the world ought to live completely alone at least once in her life. I used to teach with a girl who had moved straight from her parents' house to the one she shared with her husband, and she was terrified to stay alone. When her husband went out of town on hunting trips, she had to pay a former student to come stay at her house with her. I find that very sad.

The first winter I lived there, my electricity bill went up and up and up. I expected it to go up some during the winter, but it got out of hand. I turned the heat down and down and down, and I was freezing to death. But the electricity bill kept going up. Then I had problems with the water heater. I couldn't take even a short shower without running out of hot water. I went by the leasing office one day to pay my rent, and I casually mentioned my hot water problem. They came out and discovered something wrong with the hot water heater, which they repaired immediately. When I mentioned my electricity bill, the manager said for me to bring my bills for the last three months and she would adjust my rent. I wasn't expecting that kindness, and I almost cried right there in the office. I didn't know leasing offices could have decent, kind-hearted people working in them!

I didn't have much furniture, but I did have my piano. I should probably issue a blanket apology to any and all of my neighbors whom I might have disturbed with my playing.

There was a Burger King right across the street from my apartment. It came in handy for those Saturday mornings when a little grease was what I needed to settle my stomach from Friday night's social events.

The only thing I wish about my first apartment is that I had been into cycling back then. The ride to campus every morning would have been sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet, down a steep hill almost right to the bookstore. Coming home in the afternoon might have been a beeyotch, but I guess I'll never know.

Sometimes I miss that little apartment. I wonder if the people who live there now would mind if I drop by just to look around a little.....

Statement I'll Never Forget.......

When I entered college at the ripe age of 17 years and 2 months, I was a pre-med major. I was clueless about what it would take to go to succeed in prepare for be accepted to medical school. I think all I thought was that becoming a doctor was the best way for a trailer park kid never to have to worry about money again. Like I said, I was clueless.

It didn't take long for Mr. College Chemistry (with a Friday afternoon lab that interfered with my social life in a big way) and Mr. College Calculus to steer me away from pre-med as a major. Or any post-college plans that required a decent grade point average, since mine was already pretty much blown.

I flirted with majoring in journalism, thinking I would move to New York City and work as an editor for a glamorous magazine, eventually publishing my own novel(s) and becoming rich and famous. Or at least rich. Hard to get past that trailer park kid mentality.

I eventually landed in the English Department and figured getting a college degree for reading books was right up my alley. I didn't get as far as figuring out what I was going to DO with an English degree. I said there were two things I would NEVER do: #1 - I would never be a teacher; and #2 - I would never go to graduate school.

Clearly clueless.

One reason I changed my major to English was that I enjoyed having classes with Mack, a friend from high school. He was a scream, and he thought I was hilarious. I could always count on him to laugh at even my corniest, lamest, silliest, most pathetic stories.

I changed my major during summer quarter. Don't ask me why I went to school every. single. summer. I still don't know why I didn't let myself take any time off. The only significant time off I ever took was a winter quarter (duh) toward the end of my college career, during a particularly painful break-up with a guy who was NOT WORTHY OF ME. But I digress.

Mack and I had a wonderful routine that summer. We had morning classes, and I worked my part-time job in the afternoon. We would meet at the library around 5:30 or 6:00 and snag one of the private study rooms on the sixth floor. We would spread our books out, write papers, study, but mostly laugh. We got reprimanded more than once by librarians and other students for making too much noise. When the library closed at midnight, we would sometimes stop at a neighborhood swimming pool (I think Mack was a member, but it wouldn't have mattered to us) for a late-night swim.

Mack was NOT a romantic interest, by the way. Just a pal. I don't think he was interested in girls at all, though I have never had confirmation of that, so I won't many any sweeping statements about his sexual orientation. It couldn't matter less to me anyway. He was my friend.

Anyway, I became an English major, and one of the first courses I took that summer focused on Shakespeare. In my senior year of high school, I was on hospital/homebound with a case of mononucleosis while my class was reading Macbeth. When I returned to school, I had finished the play and loved it, and the rest of the class was still stuck on Lady Macbeth calling her husband a wuss and then freaking out because King Duncan looked like her father sleeping, and she couldn't kill him herself either. My (very limited) experience with Shakespeare had been positive, so I figured an entire course in Shakespeare would be a piece of cake.

Let me say here that in high school, our teachers attempted to scare the bejeezus out of us by telling us that when we got to freshman English at UGA, the professors would count off 40 POINTS for a single comma splice in an essay. We were terrified. We might have been LESS terrified if anyone had ever stopped to explain just WHAT THE HECK A COMMA SPLICE WAS.

I avoided freshman English at UGA by a couple of measures, one rather extreme but not planned that way. I exempted the first course by taking a placement test, and then I moved to Texas for a semester, where I took the equivalent of the second course.

Therefore, when I changed my major to English, I had had very little exposure to the terrorists who stalked the corridors of Park Hall. And the dire warnings of high school were a distant memory. I had returned to my natural state of I-know-everything-and-I'm-just-going-through-the-motions-to-get-a-degree.

Then I met George Martin. He was our professor for that first Shakespeare course, and I can still see him today. (I Googled him in preparation for this blog post, and I discovered his obituary. He died this past January in Spartanburg, which is where Hubby was born, and I don't know if that's ironic or if I'm just nuts.) He wore khaki slacks every single day that summer, with a white long-sleeved cotton shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He walked with a slouch, and he marched up and down the old-fashioned rows of desks in our UN-AIR-CONDITIONED classroom in Park Hall, smoking and bellowing. Bellowing words AND smoke. I always sat in the front row (I had been PUT there so many times throughout my school years it became natural), and I was glad when he was behind me. Then he couldn't make eye contact and glare at me.

Martin didn't believe in handing papers back in class. When he was ready to return essays to students, they had to go by his office during office hours and sit next to his desk while he went over all their written shortcomings.

By the time I had to go through this ordeal the first time, he was one essay behind schedule, and he had TWO papers to return. Trembling, I sat down in the wooden chair next to his desk and waited for his glowing remarks about my pithy, insightful writing. I looked down at the papers in my hand.

"Um.....these aren't mine," I said.

"Oh. What's your name?" Great. This was SUMMER, for Pete's sake, when we had about 20 students in class. And he had no idea who I was.

I told him my name, and this stern, hateful mask dropped down over his face. Then he said the words I have never forgotten.

"Oh." Long pause. "You can't write."

You know how you remember insignificant details about significant moments in your life? Like how I remember what I was wearing the day my brother died? Where I was when the space shuttle Challenger exploded? How we all found out about the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

I remember I was wearing a new blouse, peach-colored cotton eyelet with elastic at the neck and shoulders. I do NOT remember the grades he gave my papers, nor do I remember any of the rest of that conversation. I DO remember that I began to cry right there in his office, and when I stopped in the restroom upon escaping from his office, my neck and chest were covered in red welts.

I wish I remembered what he found so offensive in my writing. I wish I had communicated with him when he moved on to another university to tell him that his words had stuck with me all the way through my doctoral program. I have always harbored hateful feelings toward that man. When I read his obituary tonight, I finally let some of those feelings go.

Every now and then I still have doubts. I sometimes criticize my writing too harshly because I remember what Martin said. And sometimes I just don't let anyone else read what I write.

Mostly, though, as I reach the end of my teaching career, I wonder which students I may have affected in such a negative fashion. What things did I say, carelessly or even jokingly, that hurt a student's feelings and he or she has never forgotten?

I hope I never, ever said to a student, "You can't write."

Not a Good Choice for a Speech Topic.....

When I was in college I took a public speaking course, and it's probably a good thing I did. I was terrified every time I had to get up in front of my classmates (about 20-25 people, as I recall), but the more I did it the more I got used to it. The terror, I mean. We had to do a different "type" speech each week. I don't remember what the specific types were, but I remember our teacher almost did back flips when someone FINALLY used hand gestures in a speech. (It's all too easy to get white-knuckled grasping the sides of the podium.)

The week we had to do our persuasive speeches, I was in the middle of a break-up with a guy I had been dating for almost a year. I've written about him before; he's the one who Googled me and then told me we shouldn't be communicating because his wife wouldn't like it. He sang in the Men's Glee Club; I sang in the Women's Glee Club. He was Jewish; I wasn't. His mother hated me; I couldn't figure out why. (Duh - Have you no idea about the whole Jewish mom thing? I didn't at that time.)

I was feeling bitter and sad and depressed and angry and all the things that go along with a break-up that was initiated because his MOTHER said for him to.

Being the genius that I am, I decided to do my persuasive speech on the topic of not dating people from other religions. Yeah sure, I can be objective about THAT.

I don't have the slightest idea of what my teacher looked like. But I remember that I started off my speech with a sentence that said something along the lines of, "I don't have to tell you how bad the divorce rate is in our country....." or something equally erudite.

I made it through my speech, but just barely, without becoming emotional. My instructor sat in the back of the classroom so he could watch us just like the rest of the class. He gave me some immediate feedback about my speech, and I remember that he chided me for saying "I don't have to tell you" and then telling it anyway. Makes perfect sense.

But I couldn't turn around and look at him. Tears had welled up in my eyes, and I just kept staring down at my desk. He must have been smart enough to figure out what was going on, because he didn't press the issue. I was embarrassed, and I'm sure the rest of the class was embarrassed FOR me. Or they were thinking, "Man, I'm glad that's not me."

Note to self: Next time you have to give a persuasive speech, don't choose a topic that's so personally painful.

What was I thinking?