Monday, January 8

Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Heap took a course on The Concept of Culture.

The teacher gave him an F.

He painted an F on the front of a T-shirt. On the back, he painted FINBAD THE FAILER.

He wore the shirt to class.

I no longer remember if this happened, or I made it up, but have told the story for so long I think it really happened.

Or have written so much I'm no longer sure what I remember and what I imagined.

I know the first time I took my comps, I was expecting to pass, at the PhD level, and was asked to take them again. I didn't even pass at the masters level.

I didn't fail, but they thought I could do better, and asked me to take them again, and show improvement.

That spooked me. I couldn't show improvement, because I no longer knew what it was.

I know I kept taking the exams, and passed one section after another. At the end, I only had to retake the section on my specialty, Southeastern Archeology. But I never did pass it at the PhD level because before I could take the exams the last time I did a stealth drop-out and seized the donut, stealing the last year of my fellowship to teach myself to write.

I did this because I saw that (1) I wasn't going to get the PhD degree, and (2) if treating students the way Tulane treated me and Brenda and Larry was what a college professor did, I didn't want to be a college professor anymore.