It is shortly before midnight, and I've just returned from another exhausting day on campus. I had two finals to administer for my classes, and as always, I was left with a feeling of sadness. I am conflicted as to why I should feel this way, but it has to do with the perception of change, and an appreciation of the road I have taken.
When I was at UCLA in the early 80s, I still conserve the memory of those first college courses. In particular, an intimidating course that was numbered Chem 11A, one that was famed for mowing down legions of freshman. It was was ominously termed a "weeder" course, by which they meant that it would eliminate those who didn't have the skills nor, as we freshmen feared in our simplistic thinking, the "intelligence" to master these concepts. It almost claimed me.
It had been a wondrous quarter, and I remember with joy my other classes. I was taking a beginning Calculus class (31A), a freshman English class (English 3), and a beginning German class. These were wonderful and satisfying courses, and I was stimulated by all of them. The Chemistry class, however, was a bewildering experience because I had never before been intimidated as much by a course.
I had considered college as a proving ground, one in which I would show my mettle and undertake new challenges. I had always been attracted by the Humanities, and had been seduced by the prospect of being able to read those most vital texts that underpin our Western outlook. However, at a certain moment, I took a wrong turn, and decided that if I was to attend college, I needed to assure myself of graduating with a degree that would translate into a good job. I believed the calumny that English majors were destined to wait tables, and I opted to study Engineering. It fit the bill in terms of offering a challenge.
That first Chemistry class was a disaster in the making. It was held in an auditorium, which wasn't such a novelty given that my summer mathematics class had also taken place in a similar facility, but it was certainly not as easy to follow as other courses. There was no personal interaction with the professor, and as I recall, there was little attempt to solicit questions from the students. We were reduced to sitting passively in our seats, feverishing squinting at the far-off board and trying to write down equations. I remember being scandalized by seeing that some students were slumped as they sat and seemed to be dozing. What was the point of attending lecture, if they didn't take any notes and their attendance didn't translate into any points? Some students seemed to be tempting fate, in my perception, and I tried to remain studiously awake, filling my notebook with formulas and trying to assimilate as much as I could.
My professor was a elderly man named Kenneth Trueblood, and as I look back after all these years, my impression seems to be that he looked like a taller version of Dick Cheney. He never, ever engaged in any politics, and as a matter of fact I found it fascinating that it was said that he had worked in some program of exchange with Soviet scientists. This was still the height of the cold war, and we were already aware of the proxy wars raging in places like Afghanistan and Nicaragua, but my professor seemed like a true, dispassionate scientist, one who might have been afforded a glimpse into the scientific domain behind the iron curtain. I and most of the class were in awe at the way that he could seemingly carry out exquisitely complex mathematical calculations in his head, solving equations to three or more significant figures, while standing in front of a blackboard. There was something wizardly and almost inspiring about these performances.
The tests, on the other hand, were demoralizing exercises. It turns out that he devised all manner of novel applications to the concepts we were studying, and in particular I will always remember one problem that was framed in terms of the conditions that were to be encountered by a space probe upon landing on a Jovian moon, a place in which special chemical reactions were taking place. As the inveterate fan of science fiction, I could well appreciate the scenario, but I remember thinking at the time that I would have preferred to be reading a story about this experience, or better yet, writing it, rather than trying to make sense of chemical reactions that needed to be analized with appropriate formulas that receeded into the background in a jumble that I couldn't disentangle. I made a stab at this problem, but I doubt I obtained the solution. These and other problems were intuitive, and they taxed me to the limit. I felt considerable frustration, and I despaired over my test scores.
It was back then that I came to dread why seemed to be a fait acompli. I was afraid that I would not pass the course, and I was to be ignominiously "weeded out", as would happen to so many of my fellow students. Perhaps I didn't have what it took to become an engineer? Did this mean that I would also wash out as a college student, and feel myself sinking back into the working class mileau that I had so desperately wanted to escape? For someone who had confidence issues, as I did, and who felt that I had to disprove the stereotypes that circulated with regards to Mexican-Americans, I felt frustrated and saddened. And yet I continued studying, burying myself for entire weekends at a time in my dormitory study hall and making sure that I was the last one to leave.
Well, finals came, and I entered into the auditorium with a heavy heart. This was to be my first final, and it took place on an early Monday morning in what I recall was a chilly December. The weekend had been a blur of studying, and I think many of us felt doomed. During the past few days I had heard jokes made by other students about taking matters into their own hands, and it was said that someone or other had vowed to pull a fire alarm in order to interrupt this ritual slaughtering of the innocents. I supposed that Herod (Prof. Trueblood), as a seasoned UCLA professor, was no stranger to this possibility, and I suppose furthermore that the school had quite prudently already dispatched personnel to watch over the alarms. I was not privy to the plot, but secretly wished it would succeed. Somehow I thought that the final might be postponed and we might obtain a few more precious hours of studying, as if a major university could really accomodate such a change in the schedule. There was no fire alarm and I and several hundred other students were left for three hours to struggle with chemical reactions and various formulas.
It was excruciating, and I remember leaving with a mixed sense of despair but also, somehow, relief. Despair about the outcome, but relief that I no longer would worry about it. What was done was done, and I viewed this as a setback, one that I was already taking steps to cope with when my grade arrived. And yet, things turned out differently than I thought.
Somehow I scored high enough to obtain a C in that course. Given that my grade average had been lower going into the final, it means that somehow I scored a B or higher in the exam. This was quite a surprise because I had felt as if there was no chance of passing, and I was already making excuses for myself. I was rationalizing the experience, and while I still remained in awe of the professor, I remember complaining bitterly about the course to counselors, some of whom were wisened student who were just a few years older but who remembered vividly their own experience in these "weeder" courses. One of them sat quietly and listened to me, then assured me that this course was designed precisely to tax students to their limit. The fact that I had survived counted as a testament to endurance as well as ability.
I received As in all my other classes, from Calculus to English composition to German 1, but that C was my greatest achievement. It would forever be associated with a moment of despair, one in which I had almost lost my faith and lamented, as I did, having seemingly been forsaken. Those ten weeks in a course in which I had labored so hard to follow along and to grasp the intricacies of Chemistry, and in which so many of us had taken comfort from the fact that it seemed an impossible prospect to survive, had somehow strengthened me in my resolve, something that years hence I would paradoxically come to regret.
I now knew what it was like to enter into a final and know that everything depended on the outcome. I often wonder what would have happened if I had not scored high enough on that final bring my grade up to a C. Would I have decided to give up on a career as an engineer, and instead re-dedicate myself to the Humanities, to my first love, so to speak, as I had originally intended? Would I have been happier at UCLA, instead of carrying forward with me dim memories of suffocating formulas and dingy lab and computer rooms? In the end, I would return to UCLA years later with a burning desire to explore what I had set aside during my freshman year, when I choose to pursue Engineering and refused to pay heed to the warning sign provided by that first Chemistry class. For the first few years of my working life I would lament those lost experiences, that golden period of my life when I was in my late teens and early twenties and when I could have dedicated myself to an exploration of the Liberal Arts.
Who knows what I could have achieved? I could have continued to study German, and finished by reading Goethe and Heine in the original, perhaps studying abroad in Germany as well. Maybe I could have relished reading Plato's Republic as I have in latter years, and been stimulated by the parable of the darkened cave, one that I heard from time to time recited by other students in my dormitory, causing me to envy them. Maybe I could have luxuriated in the language of Shakespeare, and the intricacies of Japanese and French and Chinese history, while also possibly becoming a columnist for the Daily Bruin and possibly developing a passion for journalism. I also wanted to be a writer, and I had a vivid imagination that was populated by places and ideas and authors and works that I wished to explore, using them as guides and models while also venturing out in new directions.
Unfortunately, all this was seemingly discarded during that summer before my freshman year, when I decided to ground my expectations on the need to gain economic self-suffiency above all else, even if it meant selling my soul. I foolishly decided to pursue a major that didn't inspire me, and my not having been weeded out in Chem 11A helped to sustain that intention in a way that would ultimately prove more damaging than if I had simply failed that course, as I expected. Providence had not provided for me when I earned that grade, and I was architect of my own doom (to express it in melodramatic terms).
And now, several decades later, we come to a different vantage point. I am the person who is administering final exams, after having made a painful transition in this, my second career. I enter a classroom on these occasions and I see the students sitting nervously, reviewing their book desperately at times, twitching their arms or tapping their legs compulsively, at times with all the tell-tales signs of wearniess and sleep-deprivation. Am I projecting my own memories on them? Perhaps I am up to a point, but then again, I think this signs are too an extent universal, and accompany the college experience of so many young people. I've been a veteran of all too many classes to have forgotten them.
In this case, in my morning class, I have a few students who are not passing the course, and for whom it may be said that they desperately need a "Hail Mary" pass to have any chance to score above an F. And I wonder what it must feel like for them. I see them, as I see the other students who insist they desperately need an A, or a B, or any other grade, and I see that they also have formulated plans that they wish to follow. It may be that after taking my class and not receiving the grade they so desperately sought they will be sidelined and will have to change these plans. Will it be all the better for them? It is a virtual certainty that some of these students will be surprised, and perhaps it will be for the best if it causes them to really look within themselves and make more suitable choices. Somehow I made it through that terrible experience that was Chem 11A. Have the roles now been reversed, and will I unwillingly abet students who would be better off in another major?
I certainly wish that I had used my experience in that Chemistry class to have opted out of studying Engineering, and instead dedicated myself to becoming the English major I always wanted to be. I knew I was a writer in waiting back then, and it took many years to retake that path. Years whose loss I rue because I know that those could have been my most productive years, when I had the energy and curiosity and innocence to more fully explore this craft. My innocence is long-gone.
I have retaken it after a fashion now, but I still view finals as formative experiences. Yes, there is always a certain amount of manipulation that takes place as well, a phenomenon that is inevitable. There are students who praise you effusively at the end, and who make gracious remarks about taking classes with you again, and who are elaborately polite as they take their leave. I know, it is meant in part to ingratiate themselves and perhaps predispose me to be more charitable, but what they don't realize is that I already have that predisposition because I still remember what it was like to be in their position. I remember the terror that finals represented for me, and how I desperately wished that an intrepid school plot to pull a fire alarm had succeeded. We aren't completly rational at those moments, and I don't always hold to a strict adherence to rationality.
I'm not sure how many people will fail, but I know that there will be some who will. And I know that they will have decisions to make. I hope they will view them as what we in academia are renowned for propounding, those "learning moments" when options will become clearer. I just hope they won't be so muddled in their thinking as I was as an eighteen year old who took a temporary triumpth in a Chemistry class and extended it into the pursuit of a major and then a career that were ill-suited to me.
And yet, for all those experiences, here I am, chastened but hopefully wiser.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2011
Copyrights ORomero 2011
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