“OH YEAH, THEN YOU GET AN “F”! THAT’S YOUR GRADE. “F”!

My 1st-year poly-sci professor stared into my eyes and then turned around and walked away from me into his classroom.  I just stood there in the hallway, shocked, wondering if I should still go into his class.  What the hell just happened?

We were cool a week ago.  

I had just finished a presentation in his class on “Freedom & Liberty” but as soon as it was over, I had to leave to go to a doctor’s appointment.  My presentation was entertaining and interactive and I did it on purpose to make things interesting.  You see, at the time, my real goal was to become a stand-up comedian and any time I could get in front of people, even if it was in a university setting, I was going to make it fun.  I left that class thinking that I just killed it, that my professor had to give me an “A” just for the fact that I had everyone in the palm of my hands.  I didn’t even think about it until the next week when I was waiting in the hallway for his class to start.  That’s when my friend Joe saw me.  He waved at me to come towards him where he was standing at a short stairwell just down the hallway.

“Neil, come here, I have to tell you something…”

I walked over to him and he just looked around first and said, “Yo, man, after you left last week, did you hear what the professor said?”

I said, “No, but it was good right?”

He said, “No man.  It was bad.  As soon as the door closed, he looked at the class and said, ‘You see that guy?  That guy will never make it in life.’”

I was in shock. “There must’ve been some mistake.  There’s no way!”

“No, man, that’s what he said.  I didn’t think it was right, but I didn’t say anything.”  

My thoughts turned from disbelief to rage.  “Who the fuck does this guy think he is?  You can’t say that to people when I’m not there to defend myself!”  

I’m gonna say something to him.

I saw him walking towards his classroom door weaving past students.

I made a beeline towards him and stopped him before he could walk into the class, “Sir, excuse me, can I talk to you for a second?” He looked around and just nodded and he followed me behind me just down the hallway.  I turned around and looked at him.  He was taller than me, slender, with a kind of nerdy, bookworm, studious kind of look. I remember he was clutching his books over his chest, using it like armour, then he readjusted his glasses to pull them up closer to his eyes.

“What can I do for you, Neil?”

I could hear my heart pounding through my chest, my hands were balled up, sweaty, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  The thing is, I hate confrontation, but today, I convinced myself that this just something that I had to stand up for.  

“I heard what you did last week, sir.  After I left, you told the class that I would never amount to anything and would never make it in life and I just think that that was wrong. I would appreciate it, that if you had something to say about me, that you would say it to my face and not in front of the class.”

He just looked at me blankly and the awkward silence between us felt like forever. He looked down and back up, then adjusted his glasses again before saying the words that are still burned into my memory. He raised his hand, bent at the elbow with his wrist limp. It was like his arm was a cobra ready to strike and then he said,

“Oh yeah!? then you get an “F”! That’s your grade. “F”!”

but every time he said “F” his hand would move forward like how a cobra would strike at its prey. I could feel the wind from his hand as it came inches from my face. It was like what Donald Trump used to do when firing people on his reality show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”  

After two cobra strikes, I guess he felt satisfied that I had had enough, because he just turned around and walked back to his class leaving me standing there by myself, in shock. I had a decision to make.  I could either go back into the class or never walk into that class again.

There’s a funny thing about people who don’t believe in you.  1) they probably don’t know who you really are, and 2) they definitely don’t know who you are.  

Because the thing he didn’t know about me was that other than making people laugh, my other passion was proving people wrong.  So, I walked back into his class, sat down, and for the rest of the year, I poly-sci’ed the shit out of that class. I did enough to turn that “F” into a solid “C”, which allowed me to pass when it was all over.  I never took another Poly-Sci class again.

Around 3 years later I saw that same professor walking towards me in a hallway, he was still clutching his books to his chest and looked like he was in a hurry to get to another class.  We locked eyes for a second and he looked at me trying hard to remember who I was, but we didn’t stop and we just continued on our way.  I like to think that his memory did come back to him and he realized, “Oh yeah, that’s the guy that I said would never make it in life.”

Well, jokes on him.  I was still making it in life then, and I’m still making it in life now…just not in Poly-Sci.

Thank you.