Redheaded Jill

After talking with my best friend about her professor it reminded me of some stories from college.

I wanted to be an attorney and was looking for some guidance. I had two professors shoot down my dreams. Neither knew me well. I had only taken one class with the woman and three classes with the fella.

The woman was an attorney, though not practicing. She taught perhaps THE most pointless class I’ve ever taken. It was pretty much, “How to hate America in one semester or less.” She told me that I had no business going to law school because I was not good at math.

The man was a Bible teacher and logic professor. Now… he is one of those people who is so brilliant you don’t really understand anything he says. And in his defense, he taught me in three classes. Logic, Bible something and a philosophy class. He said I shouldn’t go to law school because he didn’t think I’d be good at it.

I had a complete identity crisis my Junior year of college. I had no idea what to do, I felt stupid, I was afraid. I considered changing majors last minute to education. Then my favorite teacher of all time (from my childhood) told me that she “could not in good conscience recommend anyone become a teacher at this point in time” because the education system is so messed up, especially in our town.

As a result I took the LSAT, went to law school for a year, became severely depressed, dropped out, and now I’m still paying back tens of thousands of dollars for a wasted year. Woohoo! Gotta love the American education system! And the idea of college and grad school in general.

Is my failure the fault of those two people? No, not really. Could I have used encouragement and guidance? Yes. Did they offer that? Absolutely not.

And I went to a small Christian school. Like… 3,000 undergrad students IF that. These people had an opportunity to know their students better than anyone and they only helped the kids who were “special”. If you weren’t in honors you were ignored. If you weren’t a Bible major you were ignored. If you didn’t have an active role in social clubs you were ignored. Anything I received from that place I got after a fight.

(Can you tell I’m still bitter about college?)

To be continued…