Good Morning

Geography ends at 9:15 and Math starts at 9:30. When I’m not doped up on Concerta, I tend to get hungry and run to the local café to grab a bagel in between classes. I run into Arjona, a decrepit, mauve colored Humanities building with the charm of a Jamaica Plain tenement. Last week I got to class at 9:32 and was greeted by my teacher with a startled ‘holy crap’. I stood in the doorway, coffee and bagel in hand, while a flustered Unawatuna Gunathilaka told me to ‘go grab a seat from another classroom’. Another girl who was standing in the doorway followed me as we both searched for a chair, desk, milk crate, anything.

I lugged a desk into class, and Unawatuna ranted for an hour and fifteen minutes about the chapter we were working on. Nobody dares to ask a question and interrupt his premeditated train of though. Since I have a hard time understanding him through his thick Indian accent, I read the handout he supplies and copy the problems he does on the board. I'm not the greatest translator but I can read pretty well. I have yet to receive a handout without at least two typos. These aren’t word typos, but more like that 5x you just solved for should be x5 kind-of typos.

Unawatuna tells us to call him Asiri, which I still don’t understand. Regardless, I’ll give the man $100 if he can tell me my name. Seriously. Last year I had a biology teacher who gave a bonus point if we knew his name, but I digress. Unawatuna passes out attendance and I write my initials next to my name. If it’s a Tuesday I initial my friend Chris’s name too, because he only comes on quiz days. We have a review session for our upcoming exam from 12-2 Saturday, which happens to be Valentine’s Day. My girlfriend will be thrilled. Instead I can always read the textbook, available used at the UConn bookstore for $70. Funny, I paid $11 for the same edition on Half.com. We’re not allowed to use calculators, despite the fact it is 2009.


Did I mention I’m paying $4,000 to take this class?


So college can be pretty fucked up. It's an incredibly expensive product that we're paying for. The late Randy Pausch called college "an expensive personal trainer". I've learned more about myself in 18 months of college than 19 years back home. However, there are clearly some huge problems within the system. How come in high school I had veteran teachers that remember me years later, while my college teacher is here on scholarship, teaching me just to fulfill his own graduate degree? Hmm...

Good morning, look at the valedictorian
Scared of the future, while I hop in the Delorean
Scared to face the world, complacent career student
Some people graduate but we still stupid
They tell you read this, eat this, don't look around
Just peep this, preach us, teach us, Jesus
Ok look up now, they done stole your streetness
And after all that you receive this?

-Kanye West