A lesson learned the hard way

“Did you ever skip school?” I was asked the other day at the bank.
“High school? No,” I replied.
But I had to add quickly that when it came to cutting class in college, my record provides reason to blush.
That was particularly true this time of year. And it was especially true with classes scheduled in the late afternoon.
Though I am not proud of it, I must admit that there was a French class in the late afternoon of spring term my freshman year in college that I seemed to be physically ill-suited for attending.
The sun would be shining. Frisbees would be flying. And the last thing on my mind was conjugating verbs or trying to master the subjunctive in a French class.
Besides, I told myself, I’d gotten an A the previous term and seemed a couple of jumps ahead of the rest of the class when it came to “parlez-vous.”
What I hadn’t counted on, was the professor.
She had announced the first week that one-third of our grade would be based upon our mid-term exam, one-third would be based upon our final exam, and one-third would be based upon our performance on pop quizzes.
She announced that, but for some reason it didn’t sink in.
And when — on a beautiful May afternoon — the professor and my classmates found themselves doing serious academic labor while I was working on my tan, the professor noticed.
And she started having pop quizzes.
Every time I failed to attend the class.
If I showed up, there was no quiz.
If I was tossing a Frisbee, there was a quiz.
It happened frequently enough that some of the others in the class alerted me. They were sick of the quizzes. They wanted my rear-end in my seat in class simply so they wouldn’t have to take another pop test.
But by then it was too late.
And since the professor didn’t unleash the pop quizzes when I was in attendance, there was absolutely no way for me to catch up.
As it turned out, I got a C in the class. I got an A on my mid-term and an A on the final, but I received a well-deserved F when it came to pop quizzes.
That would be the end of the story, but for one thing.
It came a few years later, when it was time to graduate. I’d knuckled down as a student by then, particularly in my major.
When commencement rolled around, I was surprised to see that my name wasn’t on the list of those receiving departmental honors in English. By any normal standard, I should have qualified.
A friendly professor in my department pulled me aside to explain. “Think back to spring term your freshman year,” he said.
French class immediately came to mind. And then it suddenly occurred to me that my French professor was married to the head of the English department.
She had finally gotten her revenge.
And neither my tan nor my skill with a Frisbee proved enough to reverse the decision.[[In-content Ad]]