...That I'm Too Cool For School?

I was sitting at a restaurant on the University of Louisville campus, dutifully skipping whatever class I was supposed to be attending. My cohorts and I were huddled around a stack of Magic cards as opposed to the homework we had been assigned. The last lecture I had attended had been spent playing Metroid: Zero Mission on my Game Boy Advanced. I had been a fully-fledged college freshman for all of two weeks now, and the future was not looking bright. Alas, I am getting ahead of myself.

My early educational past is not littered with fascinating tales. I spent my elementary school years roaming the halls of Zachary Taylor. The names of my teachers there are mostly lost to time; memories from this time period are not quick to leap to the forefront of my mind. It was during my time at Zachary Taylor that I was tested into the advanced placement program, where I would stay for the duration of my schooling. I maintained an average, if unspectacular grade point average; I hadn’t the words to describe it yet, but no teacher I had encountered thus far was able to cure my apathy. School just failed to hold my interest. Aside from reading Goosebumps and the Animorphs, my hobbies were far from scholarly. Super Mario World and little league soccer were all I needed out of life, despite what seemingly every adult in my life was telling me at the time.

I graduated a proud falcon and was quickly ushered through the avian world to become a Westport Warhawk. Middle school proved to be something of a renaissance for me. I grew into a stereotypical teacher’s pet know-it-all. My grades skyrocketed. More than that, I discovered a growing interest for learning. Mrs. Monsour made numbers come alive and dance around our worksheets. March 14th became a small holiday for those of us lucky enough to have her as a teacher. Pi day challenged us to memorize digits of pi, and a sampling of delicious pies awaited us as a reward. We built toothpick bridges to learn about weight distribution and accounting.

Mr. White illuminated science and dazzled his classes with his ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube. He joked with us and delighted at the sight of Frosted Flakes. We watched on in horror as he ate said cereal with water instead of the traditional milk. He would regale us with tales of his luxury dumpster apartment. It seemed that the more we laughed with him, the more we were all willing to learn from him. Mr. White was the first teacher who entertained me as much as he taught, and the notion of how powerful that was has stuck with me.

Continuing with the trend of feathered mascots, I enrolled at Eastern High School as an eagle in 2000. This was to begin my decline into mediocrity. As school progressed, I became less and less motivated to do well. It wasn’t an issue of intelligence; I continually did well on quizzes and tests. Many of my grades suffered as I all but refused to do my homework. Mr. Wilham tried his damndest, and I really did not want to disappoint him, but I was settling into the throes of the lazy teenager. Schoolwork just didn’t compare when I could be having fun with my friends. I managed to parlay my test scores into a very mediocre year; my final report card contained mostly Cs.

Sophomore year started in much the same way. Early in the year, Mr. Poindexter informed us of the large amount of oral presentations we would be doing for English this year. I was squarely in my shell; oral presentations were the kryptonite to my Superman. As relaxed an attitude as I had towards grades, I was still a child afraid of his mother to some extent, and bringing home an F was out of the question. I owe Mr. Poindexter a great deal for encouraging me to shed the exoskeleton I had grown so accustomed to.  I finished out the year with slightly better grades, but my apathy was still quite apparent.

In between my sophomore and junior years, I had rekindled my love for a strategic card game called Magic: the Gathering. My friends and I had begun to attend tournaments, and it quickly became addicting. I spent as much time as I could reading and thinking about Magic and leapt at any chance to get in a game or two. As you might imagine, this wasn’t particularly helpful with regards to my studies. Luckily, this was also the year I met the most important teacher I ever had the pleasure of knowing. Mr. Johnson was a technology teacher whom I had for a web design class. He set himself apart from every other teacher I had from the first day of class. Mr. Johnson was the first teacher who impressed upon me that he viewed his students as adults, almost peers even. He would address us by last name, and expect from us a level of professionalism that one might find in an office workplace. He felt more like a partner in our learning adventure instead of merely the guide that my previous teachers had been.

High school continued for me without much spectacle. I was able to take another of Mr. Johnson’s classes for my senior year, as well as join the newspaper staff that was headed by his wife. My grades improved from their dreary state, and I was growing ever excited for my impending graduation. Although my career path at this point was “something with computers”, I was hopeful for the possibilities that the future held for me. I received an acceptance letter from the University of Louisville that summer and eagerly anticipated the upcoming fall. Scenes from Real Genius and Animal House played through my mind any time I thought about what my new school experience was going to be like.

What I found upon my entrance to higher learning was shocking to my young mind. I found my classes to be quite dull and impersonal. In my first few weeks, I found college to be much like high school, with the added perk that nobody was forcing me to go to class. I was free to skip as much as I wanted, with little-to-no consequences that I could see, so that is what I did. Eventually, I stopped bothering to even go to campus. I had no ambition, no career path, and soon no interest in continuing in academia.

I dejectedly bounced around from job to job, finding little meaning in any one place. Out of desperation to make a rent payment, I turned to my mother. She had worked at the YMCA for some time now, and helped me secure a position working with a before-and-after-school program. It was here where, unbeknownst to me at the time, I would learn the most about myself. I found that working with kids was simply amazing. I could not imagine any future version of myself that did anything else. That one job, a single blip on the radar of my life, has been the most pivotal event that I can think of in my educational history. It is that event that has led me to write this paper now. It is that event that has propelled me into a future with promise, with meaning, and with substance.

I learned many things throughout my educational history. It is almost impossible to sit in those classrooms day in and day out and not soak up something. Those wonderful hours with the teachers I’ve mentioned were special. They showed me that education could be fun and engaging. They have set a bar in my mind, and it has become my mission to leap over that bar like an Olympic gold medalist. Mr. White was entertaining and energetic; he made us laugh every single day. Mrs. Monsour was uniquely creative with her lesson plans. Mr. Johnson expected more from us than most teachers, and he got it. My plan is to put these teachers to shame. I want to be everything that they were, and then some. Anything less is a failure, and failure is not an option.