Taking the Easy Way Out

Maybe I didn't get into Princeton. Or Harvard. Or Brown...Dartmouth...Amherst....

Whatever. I DID get into Washington University in St. Louis, which was ranked #9 in the country the year I started by people who (theoretically) knew what they were talking about.

Incidentally, we were rated #2 for food quality.

As a top 10 American university, WashU wanted me to complete a well rounded and diverse set of courses before giving me the beautiful diploma I now have...somewhere. Hopefully in the house. I couldn't just take English lit and foreign language classes, which is what I would have done had I been left to my own devices. I was required to take math and science and history and learn quantitative Analysis skills, and Cultural Diversity skills, and Social Diversity skills, and lots of other skills, many of which involved diversity. This meant that I took two women's studies courses against my will (one of which was responsible for the second nervous breakdown of my life wherein after studying for 92 hours memorizing 115 articles, verbatim, along with their authors and dates of publication, I met my parents at the airport for my very first break, tore 115 notecards out of my coat pockets and flung them in the faces of my extremely surprised family and sobbed as I was dragged out to the car mumbling and gesturing incoherently). It also meant that I took two astronomy classes taught by a wonderful German professor with a sense of humor and a love of handing out A+s for what seemed to me like very little work. He must have been doing something right though. I may have done very little work, but that man made ME understand many Scientific Concepts. Someone should probably give him a medal.

Sadly though, I needed three science classes to complete my liberal arts education, and this is how I made a Poor Decision.

First semester freshman year a class called Dinosaurs was offered. The class was only taught once every 3-4 years by a visiting paleontologist and had the reputation of being the easiest possible way to fulfill a science credit. "You watch The Land Before Time! And there are no tests! And then you get an A!" This was how the class was described to me. I imagine there may have been slightly more to it. But not much, from what my friend who did take the class that year has told me. She strongly recommended it.

The class my first freshman semester filled up before I could even register. Despite the fact that I could have finished my science requirements any time over the next six semesters, I did not. I waited until the very final semester of my college experience to see if that Dinosaur class would be offered again.

It was. Final semester, final year, I was scrambling to finish my major and distribution requirements. I was taking 2 upper level English literature classes and 2 upper level writing intensive courses and...Dinosaurs. I knew the paper writing and story writing and reading was going to be time consuming and exhausting. In the final two weeks of that semester alone I turned in over 90 printed pages of various facts and fictions. Thank goodness I would have at least one nice and easy class!

The professor had been described to me as youngish and energetic, so when an older, sedate man nearing his 70s with glasses and a soft voice stood up in front of the lecture hall and told us he was our professor, I already knew that things had gone horribly wrong.

"Professor------ has been...called away...suddenly. Yes. So he will not be here. At all. He has...gone. I will be teaching! I understand that Professor---------- had...certain methods for teaching this course. He and I have very different approaches, I think."

I knew then for sure, in that moment, that all was lost.

It was the semester of nightmare. I had to READ about creatures with long names. I had to...TAKE NOTES. Notes! I am an A student, always have been, capable of speaking 3 languages and writing lucid and engaging papers on a variety of subjects (mainly literature), got through calculus in high school and several AP science classes. But if you look at the large majority of my college notebooks you will find mostly drawings of fairy princesses, descriptions of the scarf the girl in the corner is wearing, lines from poems and stories that came from completely different classes, and a lot of little hearts. My Dinosaur notebooks, however, are filled with all kinds of words and ideas that I did not understand, do not understand, and undoubtedly will never understand.

I got a D on one of those tests. A D. I do not get Ds. I got a D. Will I be over it in ten years?

No.

I was up late nights studying. There a few times I had to turn down going for ice cream in order to study. The situation was out of control. I spent hours doing readings and homework and going over notes trying to make sense of them.

As it turned out, the fun, easygoing professor was "called away suddenly" because it came out that he had either sexually assaulted or sexually harassed some of his female students on some field study trip somewhere. Which is why our poor new professor was so awkward about explaining himself to us.

It was the hardest class I took in my four years of college. Or, at least, it was the one that I most begrudged the effort. Worst decision I made at WashU, trying to take the easy way out. Of course, the whole thing could have been avoided if Professor Whatsisface had just kept his hands to himself and his pants on.