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Senior Seminar

It took me four years, but I’m finally a senior. As such, I’m required by law to take the most worthless class in the history of education, senior seminar. This is a class where a disparate group of students, heading toward the end of their undergraduate educations, gather together to share their feelings about life, love, and future unemployment, and do art projects that even a third-grader would wrinkle his or her nose at because they’re so beyond fingerpainting.

Senior seminar is widely regarded as a waste of every student’s time. It’s such a waste, in fact, that the administration voted to eliminate it from the required curriculum, replacing it, instead, with a year-long freshman seminar program to help students adjust to big-city living after two half-assed days of orientation at the start of the semester. No word yet on whether this is only going to be required for out-of-staters, or if everyone — including folks born and raised in and around Chicago — will have to take it. There is word, however, that this change won’t go into effect until fall 2006 and that students won’t be grandfathered into the change — meaning seniors will have to take senior seminar until the class of 2009. Yay!

My particular senior seminar class is taught by a woman who insists on being addressed as “Qween.” Yes, that’s “Qween” with a “W,” which gives you an indication of how moronic she is. Qween is honestly of the opinion that her class has some sort of value, which drives everyone in the class nuts. Last week (I cut but was filled in by some other students), apparently she only kept the class for an hour or so, and they got big sheets of posterboard and a pack of Crayola markers to — I swear to God — draw a “family map”; that is, a map outlining familial relationships. Not a family tree; this drawing is filled with roads and comical variations on true-life street signs.

Good Lord, I’m glad I cut last week.

I felt I had to come today, because part of Qween taking the class seriously involves her taking the attendance policy seriously. Most of us griped about that today before class. We’re aware we have to do the work for the class, but do we really have to draw stick-figure pictures of our parents and siblings and then discuss them with the class? I barely even tell my friends about my humiliating family; why would I want to share this information with strangers?

So the school’s official attendance policy, followed by this professor, is as follows: you get three absences. If you take a fourth, you’re automatically dropped a letter grade. If you take a fifth, you fail. Two tardies (up to fifteen minutes late) equal one absence; showing up fifteen minutes late or more is an absence. (For those who think this policy is strict, bear in mind that 95% of our courses are three to four hours once or twice a week, rather than the more typical 45 minutes a day three times a week or whatever.)

Since the school is aware of its stringent attendance policy, the handbook is pretty fair when it comes to professors who are late: since 15 minutes late is an absence, we’re legally allowed to leave if a professor doesn’t show up in the first 15 minutes as long as nobody from the office or something comes in to announce he or she is running late.

In my four years and counting of school, we’ve never actually instituted the late-professor policy. Generally, the only times I’ve had consistently late professors were in classes that were actually important, and they were almost always late, rather than completely absent. Sure, we’ve had half-joking discussions about leaving when we’ve reached 15-minute mark, but nobody has ever dared leave, and the professor has generally shown up within 20 minutes.

Why is this the case? Funny thing about Columbia students, dumbasses that they are: they want to learn things when they deem the subject important. So, if a class is in their major, they’d never leave, although nobody would bat an eyelash about leaving, for example, senior seminar.

Which brings me to today. Qween was late. At the five-minute mark, people started to get antsy and chit-chatty. At the 10-minute mark, people started seriously talking about leaving by the 15-minute mark. We all bitched about how fucking pointless the class is, what a waste of time it’d be to stay even if she did show up, and we all decided that she couldn’t do anything if there was a mass exodus.

At the 15-minute mark, we all started writing our names on the board, so that she’d know we at least showed up. Unfortunately, after that point, very few people actually left. Some of them said they had other classes to go to, so they may as well wait. Others, like me, wanted to leave but didn’t want to be the only one.

I stood at one of the two doors to the large classroom and made eye contact with another girl standing at the other door. We looked back at the people doing anything but leaving, then back at each other.

“I’ll go if you go,” she finally said. “We can be partners in crime.”

Was she coming on to me?

Answer: no. We both left the classroom and immediately went in opposite directions.

I was still worried, since three people total (one guy left before the two of us) does not an exodus make. I didn’t care enough to go back and wait, though, so I headed toward the train.

As I went, I called Lucy, who had called me during my first class of the morning. She left a message: “Hey, dumbass, call me back.” Like I said, our relationship is healthy as a horse. (Careful readers will note that me calling back actually does, technically, make me a dumbass.)

So I talked to Lucy and blah-blah-blah, she brought up some random guy she met eight months ago while she was still dating abusive boyfriend #1, but she wouldn’t dump him in pursuit of a better guy, but now she ran into this better guy again, and blah-blah-blah…

Then, she said, “I’m probably moving back to Chicago next year.”

Good Lord, the news I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been trying to convince her all summer to move back home. Not for my sake, since it’d invariably ruin my life, but because she’s ruining her own life by staying in that hellhole. She was actually talking about going back to school and getting an apartment away from her parents, and so on, and I was thrilled — it was almost identical to the plan I’d outlined for her early in the summer, which she’d refused to do because it was too late to apply to get into a different school.

“Yeah,” she said, “so Dan and I were probably gonna get an apartment near UIC, and I’m going to go to Northeastern.”

Dan? Creepy motherfucking Dan? Here I am, working my ass off trying to hit her from every single angle with reasons why she’s throwing her life into the toilet and reasons why it’d be advantageous for her to come home, and she’s having secret talks with Creepy Dan and he’s really the one who got her to come home?

God. Fucking. Dammit.

Not that I’d really be able to do anything about it anyway. My plan was for her to come back, for us to get an apartment, so she could be away from her parents but be near good doctors and (reasonably) good schools. But this plan would only work right now, because I’m leaving for Los Angeles in February and won’t be back until June (if at all). So if she’s planning to start school in the spring, it’s not like I’d be here anyway. And she even brought that up when she reminded me that most leases in the area are for 12 months. I figured I could sublet.

Anyway…does this news please me? Frankly, no. But while Creepy Dan is fucking creepy as hell, he’s still arguably the healthiest person in her life (far beyond me and her parents and anybody she’s ever dated in her life). I’m not sure if this a compliment to her or a detriment to everyone else (including me), but I will accept that it’s true.

But it makes me feel down on myself because, among other things, it’s like she intentionally made plans to come back to this city as soon as I’m leaving. It makes me wonder if she’s finally realizing how pernicious our friendship is. This depresses me, because if she figures that out, rather than trying to work on fixing it like I am, she’d just let it go, citing the “bad influence” that she “doesn’t need” in her life. Not that we’ve never shoved one another out of our lives, but this time it’d be for good.

And it’d be because of Creepy Dan.

This means I’d have to fight for my honor. No, I won’t challenge him to a duel. Really, I’ll just keep working on her. “Why come back to Chicago? I thought your mysterious illness was brought on by seasonal changes…perhaps you should go to a place like Los Angeles, which in addition to having no culture, has no seasons.

“Besides, hasn’t Creepy Dan confessed his undying love for you on multiple occasions? You really think living with a guy like that would be good for you? It’d be much better to live with someone who can barely stand the sight of you, so you have somebody to fight with regularly.”

It’s so easy!

Posted by Stan on October 11, 2004 5:18 PM  | Permalink | School Rants | Digg It