1996-2004
Seeing as how the title of this blog is Operation: Fighting Boredom, it should come as no surprise to learn that I skipped a LOT of academic classes – starting in high school, continuing on through college, and ending in law school.
As far as I can remember, my senior year of high school consisted of the following: (1) show up to the combined AP English/Government class first two hours of the day (because it was taught by two college professors who were actually not boring), (2) poke my head into AP Calculus third hour to say hi and sometimes stay to play euchre, (3) go home to eat lunch and watch Baywatch, (4) take a nap, (5) go back to school for last period Spanish in order to play euchre, (6) go to golf practice in the fall and track practice in the spring. I’m sure I had other classes in there, but I can’t for the life of me remember attending them.
College was much the same, especially for the big lecture-style classes. I had fairly decent attendance for my small anthropology classes taught by full professors who had just gotten back from some remote part of the world (most definitely not boring), but the chances of you seeing me at the big lecture halls for classes like Political Science 101 was remote at best. When the choice was between (A) go to a lecture hall with a couple of hundred people where attendance is not taken and the prof is going to regurgitate word for word the $150 text book I had to buy, or (B) some combination of sleeping, watching TV, and playing video games, guess which one I chose?
A specific example of my thought process in college was Economics 101, which I took in my final semester of college. The lecture part of the class was offered at two times, and . It shocked everyone I knew that I chose to enroll in the lecture (especially my mother, who for a second probably thought I had gone straight and was attempting to become a functioning member of society). I simply explained that if I had taken the lecture, I might feel a twinge of guilt for skipping. But I would still be asleep during the lecture, thereby erasing any chance I would cave and actually go to class.
First year of law school scared me straight for the most part [which is probably one of the reasons why I refuse to think about that year of my life – another story for another day]. But I was back to the same pattern by third year of law school. I managed to schedule all of my classes after , and I was living in an awesome house with 2 fully-accented Southern Gentlemen (and 1 Ivy League snob) within a few minutes drive of a National Park and stocked trout streams. Again, guess which one I chose?
But here’s the thing. I know all of that makes me sound like a lazy bum (which I probably was), but I was actually a good student. Salutatorian of my high school class. 3.8 GPA at a world-renowned university. Admittance to a top 10 law school in the nation. I don’t bring that up to brag, but to ask “What is the point of education?” The little lady argues that you are paying good money for an education and should therefore sit your butt in the seat day in and day out. My counter-argument is that what I am really paying for are the framed pieces of paper I am looking at on my office wall. If I know I can get an “A” in a class without being there, what’s the point? I have apparently learned whatever knowledge they want me to regurgitate onto a scantron bubble sheet, so why not do something I actually enjoy instead of falling asleep in the lecture hall? I say blame the education system that fails to challenge our youth.
Epilogue: The funny part is that years later I think the big guy upstairs is getting the final laugh at me. I have not been enrolled in an educational class in over six years, but at least once a month to this day I have a very vivid nightmare of panicking in my bedroom during the middle of exam time. I pull a class schedule out of my backpack and realize there was a class I forgot I had enrolled in, the exam was the next day, and I had never been to a lecture or done any of the reading. The dream is sometimes set in college, sometimes in law school, and always a different class. But every time, I wake up from the dream in a panic that I have failed the class and not actually received my undergraduate or law degree. Pop psychology claims a recurring dream about failing a test shows that I am continually being scrutinized in some way and the dream is rooted in anxiety that I might let someone down. Considering the fact I am an associate attorney at a law firm, that sounds about right. But I prefer to think it is my penance for being a truant.
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