High School, Junior High, and Elementary
School were simple routines. For the
most part it was the same seven classes every day. Five days a week. One hour.
College? Still a routine, just
broken up. College was much more catered
to your personal schedule. Typically, I
took five classes. You’d have classes on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for one hour each day. Or you’d have them on Tuesday and Thursday
for ninety minutes each day. So, instead
of going to class 35ish hours a week it was more like 15 hours. And yo paid for it. But you know, you pretty much set your own
schedule and picked your own classes.
Except for the core classes.
Everybody must take those.
History 101 was one of them.
Dr. Messer taught my History 101 class.
This was a two day a week class around 9am.
I remember the first day very clearly.
I was a freshman in my first semester, it was the end of August. I didn’t know anybody in my class, so I just
picked a random spot and parked myself.
My bag at my feet and a pencil on my desk. 9 am came around and a guy walked in pushing
a bike to the front of the class. He was
tall and slender. He removed his helmet
and revealed long wavy hair. Somebody
commented loudly, “Oh shit! It’s Kenny G!”
The man at the front of the class rolled his eyes. He dangled his helmet onto the handle
bar. “Hello class! I’m Dr. Peter Messer!” Crap.
He’s in class 30 seconds and our teacher is insulted. This was going to be rough.
The next words out of his mouth were horrifying. “Look to your left. Look to your right. You or one of the two people you just looked
at will either fail or drop the course.”
Immediately a person got up, “Oh hell no!” and left.
I was scared but would stick it out.
That first day of class there were about 35 of us.
I pushed on and didn’t miss a single day of THAT class.
I took notes, read. Actually
studied. I loved history and English
because it’s not typically multiple choice or fill in the blank. You had to write and argue. I read and wrote and pushed through as our
class shrunk and shrunk. The problem
with that class was that Dr. Messer treated it as if everybody was a history
major. Most weren’t. In fact, I’d go on and take three or four
advanced history classes with history majors a few years later. This was harder than all of those classes!
I don’t know what grades everybody was
making, but I could tell I was either the best student, or one of the top
two. And I got my butt kicked. Steven Crutcher also had Dr. Messer’s
course. Just a different class. He went to school with me in Bonham and was also in the gifted classes with me. We talked about the class and he confirmed he
was getting crushed too, was a top student as well. And other folks abandoned his class. I don’t remember her name, but there was a
girl who was also a Radio & Television major and we co-hosted a weekly
radio show one semester. She said she
had his class and failed it. She went so
far as to “consider sleeping with him” to pass.
Now, he didn’t proposition her, this was all from her end. I don’t want to suggest that he even knew
about her plan. She didn’t pursue that
action though and took her F. It blew me
away that somebody would even think of doing that! And not because he kind of looked like Kenny
G.
So I just kept plugging away. By the time we were assigned our final there
were twelve of us left. We started at
35. Messer was wrong. Instead of “one of you will fail or drop,” it
was more like “One of you will remain”.
It was pathetic. The topic was
something about the theme of early American settlement and colonialism or something. I don’t even remember. We had to write an eight to ten page paper on recurring blablabla. I ended up going all in with
like twelve to fourteen pages. I felt it was articulate, had legit points, and
was on target (not like my rambling posts here). It was not just simply throwing the kitchen
sink, but it was close. I wanted to
prove that I paid attention and had a grasp of the class. I think I did the math and figured I needed
an “A” on the final to score a “B” for the class.
A week later I looked online and the
grades posted. I got a “C”. Damn.
I was easily the second best if not very best student in my class. I went to the department and retrieved my
paper. And I got a “C” on the exam. There was, in large red letters, written at
the top just one phrase, “City upon a hill!”
Our whole class boiled down to four words and I missed it. So simply but I guess I wanted, nay, needed
to make it more than that.
I’d ask Steven what he got. He got a “B” in the class. And he got the “City upon a hill” theme as
well. I wasn’t jealous or bitter. Steven was a great student, particularly in
Math and Sciences. We were great
students in Bonham, getting mostly A’s.
Now in an intro class in college I got a “C” and he a “B”. Between the “D” I got in Algebra and the “C” I
got in History, this was easily my worst semester. I would take classes even more
seriously. I’d pay attention to the
details and I’d go and be more successful, making the Dean’s list several
times. Don’t try to over-complicate
things. Keep it simple and defend! Steven would go on and also do well. And he’d continue to bum on our couch another couple years.
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