Take THAT, Dr. So-and-so!

This is from my journal entry for 9 January 2008, my first day at BYU:

---

My English professor (Dr. Claudia Harris) handed out the syllabus and went over it with us. I kinda zoned her out as I flipped through the syllabus on my own, realizing that it was almost identical to the English 100 class I took right after my mission, which was perhaps the least challenging English class of my academic career thus far and not something I want to do again.

At one point, Claudia (she prefers not to go by Doctor) asked what our expectations for the class were. Various students raised their hands and made comments, and after each one, Claudia wrote a one-word summation of the comment on the board.

"Anyone else?" she asked after 4 or 5 comments had been made and summarized on the board.

I raised my hand.

"Yes?"

"I want this class to be a challenge," I said. "If it doesn't make me think or lose sleep at night, I don't think it's worth my time."

A brief silence ensued in which she merely fidgeted with her marker.

"Yes," she said. "We'll be thinking in this class."

She wrote nothing on the board but rather put the marker away and moved on to a new topic of discussion.

At the conclusion of the class, she said something that I felt was directed toward me. I feel that way partly because of what she said but also because, whereas her eyes had roved around the room throughout the class up to that point, for this little monologue, her eyes fastened upon my corner of the room. She appeared to be looking straight at me, so I engaged her in a staring contest.

"I have a Ph.D," she said. "I have taken a lot of college classes, and I learned that I could kind of get a feel for whether or not a professor's teaching style would work for me on the first day of class. If you feel like we're not going to get along, I think you should drop the class: it won't hurt my feelings, and every time I failed to drop a class that I had a bad feeling about, I regretted it."

I couldn't help myself; I smiled. This parting shot won her my respect--and confirmed to me that I was in the wrong class. So I took Claudia's advice and dropped her class.