not satisfied

Today I did something new.

I dropped a university class.

It was fun going back and forth by e-mail with the anthropology professor (it's an online class), telling her that I didn't deserve to be flunked for poor writing and critical thinking skills, come up with a better excuse.

Just not the kind of fun that's worth having a B (or worse) on your transcript.

Today when I went to fill out the paperwork to drop the class I was hoping to get to talk to somebody -- some human person, some kind of person with authority to do something, some human person who would hear me out.

So I did the best I could. I even tried dressing like an anthropologist. Anthropologists, I figured, are the kind of people who wear earth tones, scarves, and big earrings. (They probably also carry handbags made by tribal men in primitive matriarchal societies that help to alleviate global warming and promote world peace, but I didn't have one of those.) I thought about wearing No. 2's costume glasses again, but that seemed insincere.

So I showed up there in my anthropologist costume to vent at somebody. To give an eloquent speech about injustice and professors who don't read their students' work. About how five weeks is entirely too long to wait before giving students their grades. About how I really knew all about Swidden agriculture the night I got 60% on the quiz. About how much I admired the people in Eritrea for using seawater to water their plants. Even about how when I got back from Oxford I was ready to use my bike instead of my car just to help out with global warming. About how professors who give ambiguous assignments shouldn't blame the students for their own ambiguities. About truth and justice and the American way and did you notice how much I even look like someone who should do well in an anthropology class???

And when my turn came they gave me a form.

And sent me to an office where a secretary in the Anthropology department (wearing some kind of African head scarf thing), working at a desk next to another lady (wearing earth tones) at another desk, signed my paper.

And on the form I wrote an explanation for why I was dropping that sounded really ridiculous. I think I need to work on my writing and critical thinking skills.

And then I turned in the form and drove home.

It was horribly anti-climactic.