I dropped out of college at nineteen after one semester.

I truly sucked at going to college.  I skipped classes.  I skimmed novels the night before in order to write B minus papers due in the morning.  Mostly, I couldn’t figure out why the hell I was paying for D&D all-nighters a BA in English Lit I couldn’t afford. I didn’t go back the next semester.

Instead of stretching my mind and my limits of alcohol consumption in academia, I began the vastly lucrative and oh so rewarding career in concession services at a movie theater.  Most of my fellow employees were college students.  To them, serving popcorn was a temporary sentence.  They didn’t commit any egregious life choice crimes requiring labels like single mother, college dropout or manager, who was treated like a lifer with no possibility of parole.

The problem with being a dropout is the space on job applications for schooling and subsequent questions during interviews.  I didn’t have a cool story like my parents were irradiated in a nuclear fission accident and I quit school to care for their horribly mutated bodies.  So I mumbled stuff about getting life experience because that sounded better than loser who couldn’t hack it.

Here’s life experience for you:

• No degree, no customer service experience, no marketable skills – your job requires making change for people..alot.

• No degree, some customer experience, no marketable skills – your job requires either saying how may I direct your call or it requires you to wear pieces of flair.

• No degree, some customer experience, and the ability to type 80 word a minute – your job requires picking up dry cleaning after normal work hours for someone making 10 times your pay.

Socially, twenty-something dropouts become 3rd world yokels who’ve immigrated to the promise land.  Your peers, though happy for you, assume certain words and phrases are beyond your comprehension like Bukowski or beer pong.  I was among them but separate.  They had classes in the morning.  I had to put on a name tag.

I tried returning to the fold by taking an extension course.  That was college suckage at a whole new self-esteem crushing level.  The 200 level Poetry class with the “real” poets required submitting writing samples.  I got turned down.  I ended up in the 100 level Intro to Creative Writing for Losers and Students Wanting An Easy A.  I stopped taking classes after that.

It wasn’t until several years later, that I learned to be okay with it.  I’d recently moved to Denver.  My temp agency sent me to Charles Shwabb to become a quoter, a rep that took calls and quoted stock prices to customers.  One of my co-workers just graduated with her English degree and $40K of debt, half of which were on credit cards.  We were making $8/hour.

Eventually, I did learned some marketable skills.  No wait.  Being able to play World of Warcraft for 32 hours on nothing but Funyuns and Diet Coke isn’t marketable?  Crap.

As for the poetry, about two years after my rejection from that Poetry course and about 20+ rejections from various lit mags later, I got something in the mail.

That’s Bukowski’s poem on page 39.  I’m on page 82.

Too bad that isn’t marketable either.  Double crap.

Category: Self-delusion isn't pretty | 3 - Leave a comment