Flying First Class

High school nearly drove me to madness. Despite these feelings, I had aspirations of going to college but no real idea how to do it. None of my siblings had gone to college, and I came to believe it was not financially possible for me. I was the latch-key son of a working mother who was consumed in her own affairs. School was both academically insulting and socially troubling. In the first semester of my junior year, I just stopped going. I remember letting the bus drive away without me while I stood silently behind the curtains of my living room window. I was dressed and ready with my books neatly stacked by the door, and I was alone with my own thoughts. That winter morning I made a decision I would never regret. Soon I obtained a General Equivalency Diploma (GED). It was an affirmation that high school had little, if anything, further to teach me and I was ready to move on. I worked various jobs, and quickly became aware of the self respect that comes from self-reliance. I did not want a paycheck dolled out to me by someone who, with a stroke of a pen, could write the measure of my worth. I went into business for myself, and business was booming. Soon I had hundreds of customers and my phones were constantly ringing. The incessant ringing of my phone became a comfort to me. The many customers who came to me for help were both a responsibility and a justification of my life. College became a distant dream - one which would remain impossible for years to come.

The metronomic beat of my daily routine drummed away my youth in a dizzying succession of months. There was barely a recognizable transition from one year to the next. Five years of marriage passed into divorce, and with custody of my two little boys, I marched on. The weeks were a flurry of "Dad [this] and Dad [that]," broken only by the occasional pleading whisper, "Shhhhh, I'm on the phone." The drumming reverberated; the phone rang, people got what they called for and my kids were fed. Thousands of schooldays came and went. After a cascade of burned-out computers and replacement telephones, things took an unexpected turn.

One Midwest morning, I woke to discover my children were teenagers. The most interesting thing about teenagers is that they are blessed by God the moment they turn thirteen - overnight they know everything. With each visit to the store, my two precious sons began to walk a little further away from me. I checked to make sure I did not smell bad or something! The "Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad" ebbed away and they began to come to see me only when they needed something. Eventually I had to begin to track them down and interrogate them to have a decent conversation. The children, who were the occupants of all my waking moments, became distant for longer periods of time, consumed in their own interests. The vacuum of their selective absence was both suffocating and liberating. I began to imagine what life would be like when my sons were grown and gone. It is a cruel irony that, to be a good parent, you must teach your children not to need you - even when it breaks your heart to do so. I was accustomed to being starved for free-time, and when my plate was finally full, I ate until I was bloated, dull-witted and in need of a purposeful-walk.

The metronomic drumming of my routine-life stopped without warning. It was as if a fog was lifted and I realized things had changed to a degree that had surpassed the threshold of denial. I was both exhilarated and frightened by the accompanying ideas that began to invade my thoughts. I still had child-rearing years ahead, but for the first time since I became a father, I had the time and opportunity to reconsider going to college. I deliberated at length before deciding to go back to school. In my computer business I had taught myself much more than office administration. I learned server administration, network administration, a dozen programming languages, website design and all the accompanying specialty-fields like graphics, scripting and streaming media - the list goes on and on. I could teach myself in a week what others took months to master. When customers came to me with needs, I said "Yes we do that," and then I learned it - and then I did it. There were certainly specialists who were more knowledgeable in their respective fields, but over time the variety of skills I learned surpassed anyone I knew. With such an investment, it was hard to consider going to college, but I made the decision to go for it. I was more than ready for something new. I was middle-aged and college bound.

I started in the summer when the classes are accelerated. I registered for an introductory writing class. The prospect of my first class flying by in six weeks appealed to me. I had dreamed of college, and the thought that I would actually have my first college credits in such a short time was motivating. I knew even before the class started that I would write about it, and that I would title my story "Flying First Class" due to the brevity of the semester. The class was nothing like I expected. I had visions of students with their laptops and notebooks writing about interesting subjects. The professor would carefully review the work of each student and point out errors, making us better writers than we ever thought we would be. When the reality of my first class experience was over, I would be in a stupor. I would be left angry that this class actually cost me money. It would be the class that taught nothing - the equivalent to a bait and switch scam so masterfully orchestrated that even while being robbed, I participated.

The first week we wrote exercises about mundane topics and read them out loud from the overhead screen. In subsequent weeks, we wrote papers and traded them with our peers to look at. There was no predicting which student would look at my paper, and absolutely no guarantee they would have anything useful to offer in their comments. Many students were poor writers and gave advice that, if heeded, would cripple my work. And so it went, week to week, students looking at the work of other students. Our professor blathered on with personal stories about her life, the wealth of her friends, marriage, how to change a tire on a car - there was no limit to the irrelevant stories she would tell or to the percentage of class-time she would dedicate to them. My desk was like a bathroom stall in an awkward proximity to my professor's. I sat confined while she erupted with endless volumes of verbal diarrhea. I was embarrassed for her and too uncomfortable to ask for a courtesy flush - the other students were equally disturbed. Nobody received notable instruction or feedback. There were no clear expectations whatsoever - as students, we sat around rolling our eyes at each other, making weak efforts to reassure each other we would get though this stupidity. It was the blind leading the blind. One day I stayed after class to ask for help. Despite my asking three times, the professor just redirected me to the stories of her personal life until eventually I just smiled and went away. Each day I would listen for the one sentence she would utter to point us to the next assignment, and more often than not, she would subsequently contradict herself. I was told to write papers with relevant quotes, a theme, body paragraphs, a certain tense and MLA style. I was left to guess what it all meant. I was given no instruction, save a few papers from the college website to reference on my own. It was the kind of thing you had to laugh at or you would break down. The efforts of the students to teach each other were noble but ill-fated. Some students took to drawing funny pictures and jokes on the papers of others during the peer-reviews. I was so sick of well-meaning students evaluating my work and writing "Nice Job Dude" in the margins. The only feedback from our professor was on the three graded papers. She would mark off things which meant nothing to me (i.e., marking out the word "Bing" and replacing it with the word "Beep" which was not useful or relevant). I took to visiting the Writing Center offered by the college. Everything I learned about writing, I learned from them. I went almost every day. Rarely did a day pass when I did not try to encourage a classmate to go. Receiving real feedback about grammar, sentence structure and even the rough idea of what was expected of me was a blessing. I wanted desperately for someone to point out a real error so I could feel like I learned something. I silently wished my professor would say "Hey Glenn you screwed up this sentence and you should have done it like this..." Just one comment or one single helpful thought would have given me enough leeway to make excuses for her behavior, but instead I was left dumbfounded with a gaping jaw and an incredulous wrinkled brow. Eventually I gave up listening to my professor altogether. I did not care how her nephew felt during his birthday party or anything else she told us. Somewhere through the bloviating, I managed to grasp what we would be doing next. I received an "A" on my first paper and a "C" on the next. The "C" paper was accompanied by a grading sheet which clearly showed that I should have gotten an "A". I made one brief effort to argue the "C" but my efforts were as pointless as the class itself. She had no interest in discussing the individual paper. She redirected me to materials unrelated to her grading sheet. I was insulted but not surprised. When the final grades came out, I was awarded a B+.

I am a writer - the way a fish is a fish and can be nothing else. Unfortunately, my first writing class was nothing more than an expensive exercise in masturbation - I got through it on my own, and the benefits were of my own doing. I could have gotten through it with less confusion if the professor had simply written the assignments on the board and went home. Thank God I have a good deal of life experience to draw from. For this reason alone, I did not measure the entire college institution by this first class. If I were younger, I would most certainly have dropped out of college completely, assuming the rest of the classes would be similarly confusing. Instead, I will resurrect my shattered-enthusiasm and look forward to "Flying Second Class."