Alone and Unobserved

I am a bad student—even a very bad student—and I have any number of professors, teachers, teaching assistants and classmates who could provide testimony to that effect. I hate studying, rarely turn in assignments that are complete or on time, procrastinate constantly and lack any discernible motivation. Despite these deep character flaws, I managed to coast along for several years as an undergraduate, getting mostly A’s and A-’s, regularly appearing on the Dean’s list, repeatedly receiving full-tuition scholarships and, I need hardly add, earning the hatred and contempt of harder-working students everywhere.

The tide began to turn in graduate school. Coasting along now got me B’s and C’s, and I began to struggle to understand the simplest concepts in the courses I was taking (I am still embarrassed that it took me three tries to understand rational and Jordan canonical form, not to mention the fact that tensors still escape me). But instead of changing my ways, buckling down and putting my shoulder to the wheel, I became even more apathetic. “I didn’t like that class anyway,” became my refrain. “If I had really tried, it would have been cake—so it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t respect the professor, and I can’t apply myself for someone I don’t respect. I’m an unfunded graduate student, and no one pays any attention to me. I AM MAGIC AND THE RULES DO NOT APPLY TO ME.”

I got my master’s in math by the skin of my teeth and moved on to bigger and better things, i.e., a library science program, which I figured would be stupid and easy enough for me to just sail through, after the utter hell that was mathematics. In a fit of brilliance (cleverly disguised as temporary madness/idiocy) I signed up for a program that began two weeks after my last math class ended, thus ensuring that I would be thoroughly burned out right from the beginning. And thus indeed it proved: in the first semester, the classes were incredibly easy—insultingly so—and yet I failed to excel, receiving B’s in both of them. Again: “They were so stupid that it wasn’t worth trying. If they challenged me, I would do better.”

This last January, I enrolled in two classes. One, a database class, actually seemed interesting; there were only two assignments the entire semester, and the main one involved creating a fictional library, designing a database to manage it and cataloging ten items in the collection. The professor seemed intelligent enough, and he and I got on fairly well during the face-to-face class time in Vegas (read: I argued with him constantly, contradicted him openly and generally annoyed the crap out of all the other students in the class). On the whole, the course promised to be time-consuming but possibly rewarding.

The second, a course on library management, seemed simple—too simple. The only homework worth mentioning was a weekly discussion on an online message board, coupled with a few minutes—nay, seconds—of research to back up our opinions. Naturally, as this was, without doubt, the easiest class I had ever taken in my college career, this would be the first class I would fail, the first F I would ever receive in my life. Because the course was so far beneath my notice, I didn’t bother even ordering the textbook until the second week of class, and while I was waiting for it I blew off a couple of assignments (which later turned out to be worth one-third of my grade). Once I had the book I participated in the discussions, but only sporadically. By the end of the semester I was barely getting a B in the database course, and I was well on my way to getting an F in Intro to Management.

Five days ago (two days before the end of the semester) the instructor of the management course sent me an email, informing me that I was failing and asking if I wanted to make up part of the work I had missed (work she had previously told me was un-make-up-able). I’m sure you understand that I had to think long and hard about this. On the one hand, if I made up the work I wouldn’t fail, I might be able to stay in the program, and I might keep my scholarship. On the other hand, I would get a C in the course, and I already had plenty of C’s. Did I really want to give up the experience of getting my very first F, just so I wouldn’t fail out of graduate school?

In the end, I decided that I still had a year and a half of the program to bag my trophy F (maybe next semester??!), and I scraped together the required work at the last minute and submitted it just under the wire. It’s official: I passed both of my classes this semester, I’m taking the summer off, and I may just run off to Europe and never come back.

[To the scholarship committee (Hi, Jeanine!): this is all a HUGE joke. I'm an awesome student, I love the program and I got A's in both classes, no matter what my transcript says.]