How I Forgot to Flunk My First Semester of College and Found My Life in a Humanities Textbook

This essay is in response to a student who, when pressed for why they weren’t turning in work despite being quite capable of doing so, told me, “I’m not like you — I have to work hard to do well!” Well, here’s my story of being completely lost until I found myself smack in the middle of junior college, and realized why ‘trying hard’ actually matters. Especially in college.

In 1993, I graduated high school near the bottom of my class. I loved to read and learn on my own, but hated school, rarely attended, and simply didn’t feel motivated in any way to push myself beyond the bare minimum. I was like so many students I see in classes today: just drifting by, not really awake or aware, not really conscious or participating in life beyond the day-to-day. I had an inkling of something else I was interested in, but it was vague and ill-formed, and no one could give a name to it, so I didn’t either.

On a whim, after being fired from a bookstore job at the local mall, I applied to Tulsa Junior College (now Tulsa Community College) and enrolled in a handful of Gen Ed courses, including Remedial Algebra and Freshman Composition I. I wasn’t sure how serious I was about it at the time, though I was interested in seeing what this “school beyond school” would be like. College had never really been part of my vocabulary, and certainly wasn’t on my mental horizon. So what the hell? I figured I could always drop out if I hated it, and if I’m being honest, I wanted to defer getting another job with the pretense of being a student (my parents probably said I wouldn’t have to work if I was seriously attending school). Not the noblest reason for enrolling in college, but it’s probably the closest to the truth.

I should have failed. I should have lost interest within a few weeks, stopped doing work, stopped attending class, and gradually drifted away only to college a few F’s on my transcript. I’m sure in a thousand alternate universes, it did happen, and I’m still drifting around aimlessly, wondering “what if?” Instead, my entire life changed. I felt challenged, inspired, motivated, intrigued, and quite frankly, awakened. My Algebra teacher seemed to actually want to be there, and explained things, walked us through the concepts, and made algebra — which before had seen vague and amorphous — knowable. And my Freshman Composition class was like nothing else I had never experienced. We had wide-ranging discussions. We debated. We wrote about real-world issues. I found my voice, and learned that I had ideas that were worth sharing with others. I would start papers early, I would revise them long after I was through; and I desperately wanted to hear the professor’s comments.

I still remember a few of the essays I wrote for that first composition class, including an argument paper about whether Tchaikovsky had actually committed suicide by drinking cholera or it had been a tragic mistake (the city was under a cholera epidemic, and all water had to be boiled before use — and yet, he drank a glass of tap water). It was the first paper I actually read multiple sources to research (this was before the internet, mind you, so I had to scour the library shelves and even look at microfilm!), and by the end of it, became a mini-expert on Tchaikovsky’s life and sexuality (he was gay? No way!). I still have the paper squirreled away among my precious possessions, since it was the first English paper where the grade actually mattered. It was an ‘A’ I felt I dearly earned, because I expanded my horizons both as a student and a writer. In short, I knew how to approach a research paper, and that the research (surprise, surprise) should come before you write the paper, and not after (something I still try to impress upon my skeptical students).

Much to my surprise — and no doubt, my parents’ — I got straight A’s that semester, and was eager to enroll again in the Spring, taking twice the number of courses, and becoming much more ambitious. This time I would take a language class — and what the hell, why not Russian? And why not a history class? And a literature class along with Comp II and College Algebra? I began roaming the halls of the junior college, reading professors’ office windows and doors, which were all decorated with cut-out cartoons and other witty slogans and quotations. I also devoured all the posters of theater productions, study groups, class announcements, and art exhibits. I gradually realized that this wasn’t just a place to take classes, it was an entire community — an entire city, really, in miniature. You could actually live and work here, and grow into the kind of person who always wanted to, but didn’t know how to do on your own. As I said before, I always had an inking that such a person existed inside of me, but I couldn’t find my way into that person, and was frankly scared to try (or fail in the attempt).

I stayed there for just shy of two years, taking a slew of classes, joining several clubs, including the Creative Writing club and the Russian club, and even having a one-act play I wrote produced by the theater department (a long story — but it happened, and I have the VHS tape to prove it!). All of this from a “junior college,” where anyone can get in, the benchmark is low, and the expectations lower, right? Not quite. Every professor I had there was eager, aware, awake, and seemed to be there for precisely one reason: to help me learn. But not to entertain me or simply to reward me with snacks for showing up to class. Some of the professors I had that first year were the hardest of my entire college experience, and yes, some were harder, and more intense, than any I experienced at the University of Tulsa (a highly-regarded private school) once I transferred there. The academic experience was exciting but rigorous; empowering but competitive. I knew a lot of students who failed and dropped out mid-semester. I even talked to a student in my Comp II class who had taken the class four times without getting a passing grade (of course, he did seem to stop turning in papers after the first one). Unlike high school, this was the first academic experience where I realized the door was always open, and if I didn’t care about the material, and refused to invest in myself, I could kindly show myself out. Far from being cold or callous, I found it strangely comforting, because it ultimately meant that they wanted me to be here, but “here” was a specific place, for a specific community. It was in no one’s best interest to pretend otherwise.

During my time at TJC, I had a tough-as-nails Russian professor who had no tolerance for laziness or stupidity. Indeed, one day at the beginning of class, she told us, “remember, if I yell at you is not because I hate you. I’m just having bad day. So maybe you can put me in a better mood, yes?” But that aside, she was an excellent professor who really knew how to explain grammar, and always connected the language to the culture. She was the first professor who ever told me (maybe before or since!) that I had a gift for language, and made me think that I could actually learn to read Chekhov and Gogol in the original (which I did; in a fashion, anyway). I also had a series of colorful, eccentric history professors who showed me that the line between the past and present was non-existent, and that ‘history’ was happening every day. These professors had character and knowledge and weren’t afraid to show either one. One professor had us fill in a map of North America with every US state accounted for, but docked us five points if we identified “Texas” (that state will never be mentioned in this class, he said — and was serious). Another professor would lecture for exactly 45 minutes every day — he was a masterful storyteller — and then stop dead, giving us exactly 5 minutes to ask questions. “And I strongly suggest you ask questions,” he told us on the first day. I have never listened so diligently or formed more questions in my head than in that class, and I always had a question to ask at the end, even if I couldn’t shove it between the hands of my eager classmates.

Yet the greatest professor of all was the one who intimidated me the most, and who was legendary for flunking her entire class (which clearly wasn’t true, but still…). It was a Humanities course, focusing on the Ancient World to the Renaissance, and it came with a Bible-thick textbook full of art, literature, and musical examples. I read most of the book before the class even started, and couldn’t wait to show off what I knew on the first day; I just knew I would be her favorite student. Oh boy. The professor, who held a PhD from Notre Dame, was neither young nor old, ready with a smile, but it never put you at ease. Sometimes it seemed…almost mischievous? I think she was getting to the point in her career when she was wondering whether any of this was worth it, and whether students really cared about learning anymore. Most teachers can relate. At first she was kindness itself, welcoming us in, and giving us a fantastic first-day lecture about the ancient world that had me on the edge of my seat. At the end of class, however, she gave us a deceptively simple assignment:

Pick any work of art in the book, and write a one-page description of the object without making any assumptions about who it is, what it is, etc., but just telling me what you see with your eyes alone. In fact, you have to start the paper by writing “What I see with my eyes alone is…” Only one page, and only what anyone could see without a shred of interpretation (in other words, don’t read the book and tell me what it tells you to see).

I remember vividly writing about a statue of Aphrodite, which I stupidly admitted in the paper itself: “What I see with my eyes alone is an old Greek statue of the goddess Aphrodite.” I went on to describe every aspect of the statue that I could, going into amazing yet concise detail, and making every thoughtless assumption along the way. When I got the paper back a class or two later, instead of the beaming ‘A+’ I expected to find starting back at me, I had a ‘C-.’ I was devastated. Totally demoralized. I had never made a C in a college class to date…not since my high school days, when grades were totally meaningless to me. And I’ll never forget how she marked up my paper, literally line by line, with a tally of my thoughtless, careless mistakes.

I had called the statue a statue. Well, it wasn’t a statue, was it? It was a photo of a statue in a textbook (shades of Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, where “this is not a pipe”). And how the hell did I know this was a statue of Aphrodite? Or even a statue of a woman? (it was headless, and the breasts were not distinctly visible). The assumptions continued to mount: I said it was Greek (how did I know? I didn’t explain), I mentioned the story of Paris and Aphrodite (is that in the statue, and if so, where?), and I even said something quasi-poetic about the way ancient Greeks would have worshipped the statue, which of course says nothing at all about the headless image reproduced in my textbook. It was the most eye-opening lesson of my then-college career. While at first it made me feel stupid and kind of ashamed, later it became exciting, a real challenge: how to describe something as you actually see it, wading through the layers of context and assumption that you bring to the work. I eventually got an ‘A’ on the assignment after two more passes, while other students, less inspired, gave up in exasperation.

This professor went on to become my first mentor, and I spent many hours in her office, accepting books from her, compiling reading lists, and soaking up all the advice she had to offer. She was actually the first person who asked me, “did you ever think about getting your PhD?” I remember almost recoiling with laughter at the very suggestion; here I was at a junior college, with barely a high school degree to my credit, so how could I possibly imagine going to grad school? I wasn’t even sure I could graduate college! She knew I didn’t believe in myself, though she must have seen the kind of potential I’ve since seen in many of my own students, who similarly doubted their abilities. And she told me what I now tell them today: “getting a PhD is just going the work. That’s it. You can be naturally gifted and have ready very widely in any number of fields, but if you don’t do the hard work of writing and showing up, you’ll never get one. But if you’re willing to do that, and you actually learn to enjoy it, then there’s nothing stopping you. That’s how I got one. You can, too.”

She probably told me this sometime in the Spring of 1995, two semesters into my college journey, and a year before I transferred to the University of Tulsa, where I would ultimately get my BA in English. Strangely enough, within ten years, in 2005, I would be at the tail end of my PhD studies, writing my dissertation and preparing to defend it the following year. That’s really all it took: ten years of hard work, dedication, and ‘showing up.’ And while I would never say it was easy, or ever seemed inevitable that showing up one day would get met to the finish line tomorrow, that’s literally how it worked. There were times I really looked for the exit, and wondered whether I had bluffed my way into the room, only to be discovered and turned out once enough people caught wind of me. And sure, there were times that professors felt I wasn’t good enough, or smart enough, or that I had to work harder, learn more, and in general, prove myself. So I did. That’s what those early days of college taught me, that one failure isn’t an indictment of your abilities or your character, and that the entire world can change in a single semester, or even a single class. It’s no exaggeration to say that enrolling in that one Humanities class put me on track to become a professor myself. Thank goodness there wasn’t a schedule conflict with another required class!

The point of this educational biography is twofold: one, to inspire someone else with my humble beginnings, and two, to respond to a student who recently told me, “I’m not like you — this doesn’t come easy to me. I have to work hard to do well. I have to really try.” I was gently asking the student why, when they were such a good writer and so clearly intelligent, they rarely turned in any work. They tried a few excuses at first: they were busy, they have a job, they have a crazy life/schedule, but finally, they fell back on the truth, which was that college was hard, and that when you fail at hard things, you feel stupid.

I get it. A student sees a professor and often assumes: well, they’re an egghead from Planet Egghead and that’s what they grew up doing, reading books and taking college classes. So of course they became a professor! The reality, of course, is far from the stereotype. Most professors’ path from childhood to the lectern (if we still use those things) was far from inevitable. Many, like me, started off as indifferent students. Many, like them, had to learn to work hard, to invest in their education, to realize why it mattered. And it’s not something you often figure out all by yourself. You need a classroom, a professor, other students, and other books to teach you. It’s the magic that often happens in a university where the entire curriculum is geared towards the most lofty purpose of all, one that is hard to quantify or tout to parents or the Board of Regents: a student’s individual journey of self-discovery.

There’s so much talk today of the utilitarian arts of STEM or business or trade school vocations. Universities have come under fire for being too ‘soft,’ of only teaching things the students need least to know. The humanities. The liberal arts. Subjects that are subjective, that can mean whatever you want them to mean, that don’t teach students to do anything, and that they never learn what to do with. Can you really use Shakespeare in your daily life? Or Greek history? Or a year of French or Spanish? And why does anyone really need to learn to write an analytical essay in our age of Wikipedia and Chat GPT? All worthy questions, and sadly, the only questions that many people ever ask our students, and the very ones that get posted, over and over, as a social media bon mot.

My response is everything I’ve already written above, but which can be simplified in a single sentence: a university believes in its students. The word, “believe,” is an important one, since by and large, the world does not believe in our high school or college students. Society tends to dismiss people as so many stereotypes and clichés. Young people are lazy, arrogant, indifferent; they’re lost in a world of social media solipsism, where they are both the subject and object of their gaze. You can’t teach them because they don’t want to learn, not like we did, in my day, when nothing was given to us, etc. etc. Ask almost anyone over 40 about the young people today, and their eyes will roll, their mouths will sneer, and they will tell you, without a shred of actual evidence, about how worthless the youngsters are. And they will probably say it with exactly the same words, intonation, and vitriol as their parents and grandparents’ generations once phrased it.

Not that college is some non-judgmental utopia where every professor sees the students for who they are, open-armed. But honestly, it’s much closer to a utopia than anything else we’ve managed to conjure up in a democratic society. I entered college as a misguided loser, well-meaning but hopelessly lost. Most people would have taken one look at me and said, “see, that’s what I’m talking about: shiftless no-goods like him, who wash up at a junior college without a plan.” Most people would have failed me on the spot, as so many high school teachers actually did (I remember one saying about me, behind my back, “let’s just say he’s never been mistaken for a Merit Scholar”). As I said before, I should have flunked out my first semester and proven that I was the rule, and not the exception.

Yet I found something quite different when I stepped into my first college classrooms. I found a curriculum that challenged me without judgment. If I failed, I failed because I didn’t do the work, or didn’t do it with sufficient rigor. It had nothing to do with my high school GPA or the length of my hair or the clothes I wore or the words I used. Professors judged me by my in-class demeanor, by my work, by my writing. I literally re-wrote my entire past and destiny with a single assignment. After that first paper in Freshman Composition, I was a “good writer.” I became a “good student.” I became the student the teacher would call on in class, would nod silently to as I spoke, would ask me about my future plans after class. Honestly, where the hell else can you do that in such a short space of time? Where at all in our society can you be forgiven for the sins of your past, whether behavioral or academic? Because I really was: I went from being one of the bottom tier students to making the Dean’s List, and then the President’s. All because I wanted to; simply because I could.

I worry that universities are starting to turn their back on this grand mission of education which starts at the self. The point of college can’t solely be about employment or job-preparation, though becoming educated and self-aware is an important part of being employable. I found myself and my entire future career, after all, in a community college, which is supposed to merely prepare people for the workforce. Try telling that to my professors! Every one of them was deeply committed to the college education they received at various elite institutions, and which they brought to us, at a considerable discount, in a two-year school. And that’s the point of college in general: it’s supposed to bring the entire world into the classroom, allowing a student from anywhere, whatever their race or class or background, to become educated in the largest sense of the word. If we worry about students not being up to the challenge, or reserve our greatest education for our most ‘deserving’ students, what happens to those who just haven’t had the luck to find themselves yet? What happens to all the would-be doctors, and librarians, and lab technicians, and teachers who simply didn’t know they could? What happens to all the other students like me?

At a recent university assembly, an administrator from my college told us, “students today aren’t like you: they don’t know how to read. They don’t know how to study. They don’t know how to take notes or to listen in class. We have to meet them at their level; they demand it.” I understand where they’re coming from, but at the same time, I strongly believe that students have never been any different than they are right now. The difference is that we are starting to doubt ourselves and our mission, and become almost apologetic about what we’re asking them to do. And while school districts are becoming poorer and poorer, and our public school districts are increasingly under fire, it is true that students might be less academically prepared than they once were (though my peers in high school weren’t prepared for much, either). If this is true, the worst thing in the world we can do is say, “well, we can’t hold them to the standard of college, we have to give them a quasi-college, one that removes everything that is meaningful and transformative about college and replace it with everything that was assembly line about high school.”

Honestly, being unprepared didn’t stop me from learning when I started college, nor did high expectations or demanding professors. If anything, it showed me the way forward, and taught me to finally believe in myself. Because nothing is less inspiring that a teacher who tells you, “don’t worry, I know you can’t do it, so here — do this instead. It won’t teach you anything, but at least you’ll pass the class.” If a college degree just becomes a mindless ritual, the way high school has become in some quarters, then yes, it will become obsolete and outdated. But that’s only because we made it that way by refusing to believe in our students, our curriculum, and our very role in society.

When you open a volume of Hamlet and say to yourself, “well, it used to work, but it doesn’t work anymore,” you’re only lying to yourself. The play works; the words retain their power. But we have to open our eyes and listen to Shakespeare’s voice across the ages, and be able to imaginatively re-create an Elizabethan stage in our heads, while at the same time populating it with 21st century people and accents. And that’s exactly what a college education teaches you to do: to see the past and the future as intertwined, speaking together in a single, empowering voice. Otherwise, there are no more stories to tell or songs to sing; our culture will fade into irrelevance and our glories will be so many crumbling ruins on the roadside.

Personally, I’d like to believe in our students — and our civilization — for a few more years, at least.