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The Newsletter >
College Age - The Final Frontier
November 25, 2009
For thirty years I’ve avoided taking college algebra, by taking every other college class offered under the academic sun: Mythology, Geology, Psychology, Film-ology, and any class remotely connected with the assemblage of letters into words to form sentences, that when arranged into paragraphs line up to create academic papers called, “I Love to Hear Myself Sound Smart—a Lot.” You know essays. Me likey the word thingys.
In the end, however, people started to notice that I have approximately 2,016 credits but no diploma, and boy have they gotten surly.
“Graduate already,” a grouchy twenty-something youngish adult demanded of me.
The youngish adult would have been easier to ignore except that it belonged to me, and I agree with it. It’s true. If I were my own kid, I would kick my own butt and say, “Graduate already, you bum.”
Except that I’m having a bundle of fun—kind of. It’s fun to sit behind Johnny Whooten in a 7:00 am class and have him turn around and ask me about my mysterious Voodoo study habits.
“How do you do it?” he asked.
I noticed that my friend, Johnny Whooten, smelled of Wild Turkey and depravity at 7 am in the morning.
“What’s that?”
“The good grades, how do you do it?” I also noticed that Johnny Whooten’s right hand trembled as he held his pen. A spider eating a bird was tattooed on his wrist. The pen leaked ink.
“I never skip class, read my assignments, do all my homework, take really good notes and then before the test, I re-copy my notes onto index cards which I commit to memory,” I said, pausing, trying to decide if I’d skipped anything.
Johnny Whooten looked at me as if I had just picked HIS nose—in public.
“Okay,” I said, trying again. “I sacrifice small children to a pagan idol that I keep in a shed in my backyard.”
“Lucky,” he mumbled.
Then Johnny Whooten nodded sagely, turned back to the front of the class, put his head down on his desk, and went into a Wild Turkey induced coma. I believe he was on scholarship.
I would hurry up and graduate, except that I love the learning of new things, and listening to the young and parrot-like repeat, “ George Bush and conservatives are (insert expletive here.)”
I would hurry up and graduate, except that I love bringing true diversity to my college campus and when teachers begin the semester by poling the students with, “Raise your hand if you’re a Republican,” then I get to raise my hand and say, “Is being a Republican going to be a problem for you?”
And when those teachers ask, “Are you a Republican?”
I get to say, “Why that’s none of your business, dearest professor o’ mine.”
I would hurry up and graduate, except that I love making a perfect score on my college algebra test—which is a real, live college math and not sad math for sillies—and giving a little victory cheer when I see the smiley face under the one hundred percent mark.
I got one of those today—a smiley face. My paper is on the refrigerator already. Don’t get me wrong. The day I finish with my college algebra class, I will be burning my overpriced, poorly designed algebra book on a pyre created from yellow legal pads filled with abstract mathematical scribbling and yard clippings—dancing pagan visitor’s welcome.
When someone asked me how I managed to make an ‘A’ on my algebra test, knowing my tragic math history, I said, “I study parts of my anatomy off.”
A girl next to me translated.
When she finished describing which bits of anatomy were required in the studying off process and she continued to be met with blank stares, I said, “Okay, actually, I sacrifice small children to a pagan idol.”
Several people nodded and one young man made a note.
Gosh it’s going to be hard to graduate.
Linda (Major-Minor) Zern
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