When I was a sophomore in college, I applied to a fiction writing seminar with one of the tenured figureheads of the English department. K. was a sublime image of Ivory Tower professorship, all arched eyebrows, vaulted forehead, and imperious wit; he who sat on the porch of the now-razed literary review office each morning, puffing an enormous cigar, and who had written multiple novels and articles adapted into successful Hollywood movies. We rapt observers of K. speculated endlessly about his swashbuckling authorial exploits as we drank cheap malt liquor and shivered in our dorm rooms through the sunless Ohio winter.
I was one of twelve sophomores accepted, and the only dour philosophy student amid perky English majors. We met once weekly for three hours, and we were all still getting acquainted when we began our third assignment. K. had been extremely clear that we were under no circumstances to miss class or fail to turn in exercises; each session missed and each missed assignment would lead to the irreparable loss of half a letter grade.
Despite that threat echoing menacingly in the distance, I remained a college sophomore with full foolishness intact, and when the time came for the third session, I had but one unfinished and very undistinguished exercise. Riddled with anxiety, I made what passed for a decision: Better to skip the class than turn in such a disappointment.
K. was an old-schooler who gave out notes handwritten in smudgy pencil, so I figured that he was unlikely to check e-mails, and I could thusly get away with not sending him one explaining myself. I tiptoed around campus for the next week in fear of being spotted from his smoky porch, and ultimately finished the draft. My plan: Arrive fifteen minutes ahead of the next session to talk to K. This strategy had paid prior dividends; most of the college's professors were of a more genial sort, and I believed that it would continue to work.
I arrived at his office as planned before the next class. I entered, and as he turned, I saw him darken. "Where the hell were you last week?" he growled. I began to recite my litany of excuses, but, "That's all bullshit," K. spat back, "and this is completely unacceptable." Without exception, he loudly derided each of my academic failures in turn. Finally, apparently spent, he looked at me and delivered the coup de grace: "This is the most insulting thing anyone has ever done to me." With that, he snatched my draft out of my hands and unceremoniously booted me out.
I sat in class, alternating between horror and an insane variant of pride that I, of hundreds of pupils over the past twenty-odd years, had managed to wound the great and terrible K. so singularly with my foolishness. I considered that he had exaggerated his closing statement, but insincere people cannot quite manage that facial shade of eggplant.
I resolved not to allow my distinction as Most Insulting Individual of All Time stand as my tombstone, and to his credit, K. gave me opportunities to get back into good graces (following a two-week period of total frost). I monastically attended class, edited my classmates' work, and finished my assignments, eventually turning in a linguistically confusing short story about a group of fishermen marooned on their trawler in a storm and forced to confront their land-based addictions and infidelities as they awaited rescue. Though the result was lacking revelation or cohesion, K. apparently liked it enough that he began to address me, almost warmly, as "Buddy," rather than barking my last name at me.
Final grades eventually arrived; he was true to his word. For my sins, I received a B+, but in his moment of earlier disappointed rage, K. had forced me out of my complacency, and for that, I have nothing but gratitude.
—SIMON
He had forced me out of complacency, and for that, I have nothing but gratitude.
