Another Throwback

For reasons that I won't get into, I took a poetry class in college. Okay the foremost reason was that I needed an English class and it fit my schedule. 

It was a reading poetry class, not a writing poetry class, I made sure of this. Read and discuss poetry; c'mon that's cake.

And it would've been. Except that every class started the same way, writing out last night's poem from memory. Actually we got to choose from five or so. To memorize. Including punctuation.

Had I known that we would be expected to memorize anything I would not have taken the class.

What's worse, I quickly learned that any failure to reproduce a poem, would not result in, oh, say a B or a C like any normal class. Instead I received my paper back with a note: Incomplete, see me.

Oh this did not go over well. Are you fucking kidding me I have to meet with him because I missed one word and a comma?!! 

So after the class came to an end, I started making my way to the front of the room only to find myself in a group of twenty or so students. Oh fuck this.

So I left, thinking it would be easier next time. 

I got to Waterman early the next time. I sat on the floor against the wall outside the classroom and stared at my notebook, where I had copied the day's poem over and over. 

As we sat down, I pulled out a blank page and began to rewrite the thing I had been staring at only a few minutes before. I began to tighten up, sweat, and scribble quickly. I passed my paper forward, knowing that once again, I didn't get it right.

I got the same note on my paper and again found myself too pissed, too stubborn, and too stupid to stick around after class.

What I should've done was drop the class before the end of the add/drop period. Okay, what I really should've done was talk with the professor. But at this point I think I was too bothered by the idiocy of his methods. 

Instead I tried a couple more times until I was nearing the withdrawal deadline. Nothing changed and I begrudgingly met with my advisor (who I had never met) to withdraw from the class. She gave me a form for the professor to sign and I finally had to schedule a meeting with him.

So I bring the form to the office of one Huck Gutman (name-drop) in the Old Mill, and ask out of his class. He was prepared, had looked me up. Instead of asking, as most would, Why is a business major taking poetry? he decided on another direction.

You're a business major right? How do you expect to be successful if you can't even do this? It was very belittling. I'm not sure that I had had my intelligence insulted quite like that. 

I shrugged. I was not mature or confident enough to snap back at his completely illogical bullshit. Plus I needed him to sign the form.

I'm not sure what would've followed had I said something like, Are you kidding?! Do you actually think that an inability to memorize poetry will have any impact on my life? Then I would've kicked him in the balls, paused to laugh at his pain, and walked out.

No, I wouldn't do that. I have wanted to in some way show him how full of shit he was, but it's probably best to let it go.