School Daze

As far as I can tell, I was admitted to Dickinson College, a small, scholastically rigorous institution in Pennsylvania, on the strength of my swimming prowess.  Certainly not my academic record, which should have prompted an admissions scandal.  I was tipped off when I found the college swim team in my dorm room soon after I arrived.  There were no athletic scholarships offered at Dickinson, but the coaches had a cozy enough relationship with the gatekeepers that the occasional standout was snuck through (someone with better high school preparation would have written “was sneaked”). 

It helped that my father was prepared to pay full boat, so I opted for a different college path, one mostly involving beer, cigarettes, procrastination and rock ‘n’ roll, none of which were on the curriculum, though individual excellence in these areas was rewarded by allowing you to return every year, provided the maintenance of a shaky C average.

            My basic impediment was the theory of school itself.  I could never grasp the concept of sitting together with people my age at little desks all day while someone at the front of the room told us things.  That alone would have tried my patience, but they required you to

regurgitate their words at some later time, with rather harsh penalties for imprecise recollection.  Worse still, once liberated at the ring of a bell, we had to use precious TV-watching and horsing around time to recapitulate much of the day’s proceedings, and even add to the burden with supplemental labor.  The whole thing seemed entirely medieval.

They hadn’t yet identified ADHD in the 50s and 60, but I had such a ferocious case that my parents had to resort to drugs to keep me still in kindergarten.  Thus afflicted throughout my school career, I thought “isn’t realizing his potential” was my middle name.    Though I did have an ace in the hole.  As with many things in my young life, it was provided by my big brother, who was an excellent student, but also an omnivorous, indefatigable reader.  He caught the habit from my mother, so our house was crammed stem to stern with books. 

Since I did everything my brother did, I read every book I fell over, and then some.  As compulsions go, this was a lucky one to succumb to.  Unsupervised as it was, my pool of knowledge was quite deep in some areas, and barely a puddle in others.  My subsequent test performances had lots of hills and valleys, which evened out to around, well, a shaky C average. 

The psychological lesson for me was that information I read tended to stick, whereas anything delivered from the metaphorical pulpit sounded like Charlie Brown’s TV parents. This led more than one teacher to ask my mother why a student who aced the test on Ancient Greece (didn’t every kid devour Edith Hamilton?) could barely add and subtract (still largely true.)

Although my math SATs never rose above the statistical probability of correctly guessing at least some of the answers, I did okay on the English side of the house, maybe just well enough for Dickinson to retain its accreditation.  I’m not sure how much I learned in public school, but there’s an awful lot of information available when you have access to your mother’s Book of the Month subscription.

Most relevant to this platform, my bibliophilia soon blossomed into full blown hypergraphia.  This not only saved my scholastic bacon, it provided the template for my entire life.  When things were looking dire, I could always write myself out of trouble.  In college, there was nothing more exhilarating than the option of a term paper versus a final exam.  Somewhere within those ivy walls, I’d heard some critics regarded form as important as content.  This theory was sorely tested across a variety of disciplines, but I made it through. 

My roommate not only shared my general strategy, he honed it to perfection.  A professor wrote at the bottom of one of his papers:  “You write well, which is good, since you have very little command of the material.”  He clinched a B in Russian Literature by using the liner notes of the Dr. Zhivago movie soundtrack as his sole reference.  This is the stuff of greatness. 

Since so little time was committed to slaving over The Brothers Karamazov, or door-stop biology texts, we had ample in reserve for 8 ball, making midnight grinder runs or destroying our hearing with electric guitars.  Whatever was left on the schedule for actually writing those papers was usually reserved for about ten hours before the deadline.  This was also, for me, an invaluable life lesson.

            It wasn’t until my Creative Writing MFA program, when the focus was entirely on matters of interest to me, that I discovered the pleasing embrace of a classroom, stimulating professors and the novelty of academic achievement.  Since I had to pay for it all out of my own pocket, that might have enhanced my focus.  But I came to regret being such a lousy student and all the stuff I could have learned had I been paying attention.  Among my screwball college friends there are a few lawyers and corporate executives, along with a stockbroker, CEO and Dean of the Boston Cathedral.  There’s no evidence that a decent grade point average distracted from their attention to the extra-curricular.

Trinity College once asked a cross-section of professionals to come speak to their students about proper career preparation.  I was the designated advertising copywriter.

“First,” I told them, “don’t even buy the textbooks until about halfway through the semester.  Take a passing glance when you get a chance, in case your parents come to visit and ask what you’re studying.  On the night before your paper is due, get some pizza and sample the keg in the dorm basement, play a lot of pool, or basketball, if that’s your preference, until everyone’s gone to bed, then slip page one into the typewriter.  Think desperately of something to write that will sound even remotely persuasive.  Then you have to actually write something down, if you can stay awake.

“If you pass, they won’t kick you out, and you’re able to preserve your lifestyle (and in my case, stay out of the draft.)  This is the life of a copywriter.  Working with scant information, often exhausted, forced to produce a compelling argument under extreme pressure in a very short amount of time.  Oh, and the stakes are pretty high.  Just ask your kids, if you’re lucky enough to have them.”

They never asked me back.  Don’t know why.