Sunday, June 29, 2003

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Cliff’s Notes.

Seriously, I do.  I was an English major as an undergraduate, and my degree was earned, for the most part, reading three dollar summaries of the Classics.

Most mornings, Amy and I would wake up and yell to eachother from our respective bedrooms, “SKIPPIES?” Translation: We Are Truants.  Some days we would show up late for the first lesson, some days we would miss one class, and other times we would blow off every course scheduled that day.  In Amy’s defense, she fell into this habit because of my poor influence.

I honed this skill one year prior to meeting Amy during my Drama course featuring Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov.  The professor was a boring and eccentric woman, and the thought of listening to her drone on for ninety minutes two days a week was just too much for any 18 year old to stomach.  Amazingly, she bought my fabricated story about missing classes due to a recently diagnosed thyroid problem and I managed to scrape up a B for my final grade.

The following year, I convinced Michelle to sign up for another course with the same professor - Victorian Literature.  (Amy could not be persuaded to join.) “Come on, it’ll be a total blowoff.  She’s completely out of it and it’ll be an easy way to complete that requirement!” I could not have been more wrong.  The professor’s favorite expressions were “Ahhhhhhhh,” and “Uhhhhhhhh,” and my personal favorite, “I myself don’t see that, but There It Is.” This was her usual statement when I was called upon to respond to a question she posed, and unprepared to do so knowledgeably, I made up the biggest bullcrappity answer I could think of on the spot.  She was on to me.  Therefore, Michelle and I spent the rest of the semester tallying the number of times she repeated her Ahs and Uhs and I myself don’t see that but There It Ises because we knew we couldn’t dare try to skip out when we weren’t completing the readings.  We actually became rather well known to the Back Row Crowd, of which we were the founding members, and on the last day of class, we brought in a cordless tape recorder so we could remember her annoying phrases for all time.  We and the rest of the Back Row spent the entire class covering our mouths and laughing our asses off at our great ingenuity.  I wonder what ever happened to that tape...

Amy and I had quite a strongbox of excuses that we used on a weekly basis so that the attendance requirements for our classes no longer applied to us.  Electricity out, stalled car, various illnesses - all carefully used and never repeated in order to maintain a semblance of truth.  I think we only got away with this because we participated wholeheartedly in class discussions when we were present, thus endearing us to the naive (or indifferent) instructor.

Aside:  The only time I cringe when I think about speaking in class was in my 20th Century European Fiction course.  During class, the professor would made us read each chapter aloud round-robin style, even though we had already been assigned the chapter for homework.  When it was my turn to read aloud from a book by Isak Dinesen (I think it was Seven Gothic Tales), I mispronounced the word “truculent” (I said truce-u-lent).  This was my first encounter with that word since it was, predictably, my first encounter with the chapter.  I was passively-aggressively corrected later during our discussion of the chapter by a bookish bitch who monopolized the conversations and enjoyed making haughty and condescending remarks about reluctant comments spoken by shy and nervous students.  She was VERY serious about books, and I was not.  She was a member of the Front Row Club; I, the Back.  People like her were the reason that, for me, being an English major could make reading a book a rotten chore rather than a pleasurable experience.

I blew off classes and assignments.  I rarely read the entirety of a book when it was assigned.  If Cliff’s Notes were unavailable, I simply skimmed the text for important information and quotes that I heard mentioned in class to throw in my term papers.  I know for a fact I was not the only student of this scholarly vein.  In every class there was a Back Row clique who engaged in similar behavior.  Even in the round table classes, Back Rowers could be picked out in the blink of an eye.  It was like our own little secret society. 

I’m amazed to this day that I took my major so lightly.  It’s not like I had anything better to do, or even that there was anything else I’d rather be studying.  I was always a reader.  I could read Dr. Seuss independently at the age of 2-and-a-half.  I remember reading and rereading Judy Blume books until I could nearly recite them by heart.  One of my favorite activities was to close my eyes, choose a volume from my shelf, open it to any page, and read to the very end of the book.  I could do this for hours at a time.  I collected books like kids today collect beanie babies and video games.  Reading was a huge part of my life and books were partly responsible for shaping who I am today.

Which is why I think I was so apathetic in college.  Stubborn Capricorn that I am, being TOLD to read something, particularly within a prescribed time frame, made me much less likely to WANT to read it.  Forced learning was not my THANG.  Ironic, because I was always a teacher-pleaser and got fair grades.  But my heart was never in it.  I wasn’t trying to be Too Cool For School or anything, I just didn’t care. That’s one of my great regrets, considering the wonderful literature I missed out on reading back then.  I’m appreciating books so much more now that I am reading of my own accord.  I’ve recently joined a fab Book Club and rediscovered that I love talking about books with other people who love books as much as I do. I feel about books like I do about music. I’m not a snob.  I’ll read pretty much anything and enjoy it overall. 

I barely closed the back cover of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” before cracking the spine on my next great read.  I think I know what my college professors would say if they knew how I felt about books now...

“I myself don’t see that, but There It Is.”