Green Thumb: A fleeting history of my scholastic dissapointments.

You know the saying, “you reap what you sow?” It doesn’t hold its promise—not in the world of academia.

Last fall I signed up for “Streaming Media in Web-Publishing” because it was a required 400-level Communication course, and the title sounded intriguing.

Had Future-Me come to foretell November-2009-Me about Professor-Unrealistic-Expectations, who put together the class as an “experiment” which went insufferably wrong, I would have sprinted to my laptop, logged into the pipeline and clicked “Drop Class.” Actually, I’d be tempted to drop, but instead I’d tell Future-Me with a sigh, “That’s O.K; I’ll go through it anyway.” I'm not one to wish bad things never happened to me. No matter how painful or inconvenient an experience is, there’s always something to learn from it.

The goal of the course was to build a fully-interactive Flash website from scratch. For someone with zero experience with Adobe Flash and almost no knowledge of how to operate a Mac, this was a massive feat. On the last day of class, the professor conceded that he would never again expect students to learn so much in so little time. Here’s what I reaped:

• A full semester (with perfect attendance) of infuriatingly hard work
• A meeting with the head of the Graphic Design department for advice
• $13.00 for camera tapes to record video footage used in my project
• 2 hours of work outside of class to catch up on my project
• The library rental of a Flash “How-To” CD-ROM (a vain attempt at demystifying the cryptic program)
• Several restrained temper-losses
• A good cry after an especially frustrating class

Here’s what I sowed: C+

I had never felt an urge to dispute a grade before, not in my entire 12-semester-long college career. After the dispute, my grade did not budge to what I had hoped would be a well-deserved B-.

Discouragement? Definitely. But I did not feel wholly defeated. I worked hard, vouched for myself, and there’s not much more a student can do short of threatening a teacher with a lawsuit.

A girl named Mary has sat next to me through two 400-level classes with another professor who is a reputably tough grader. Mary has aced every paper for both classes paying little or no attention. She spends each lecture on her Macbook, browsing Old Navy’s women’s section, writing Twilight fan fiction, or doing whatever else it is she does online whilst I passionately take notes, hanging on every word that leaves the teacher’s mouth.

At the start of our class a couple months ago, she turned to me and proudly said, “I don’t feel like paying attention today”, and proceeded to record the nearly three-hour-long lecture on her laptop while doing homework for another class. I have been so fascinated and inspired by the lectures that I’ve never even left to use the bathroom. Mary aced last year’s class. I got a B-. All of Mary’s papers have been A’s. I’ve never gotten above a B+.

I’ve come to realize that some people wield a scholarly green thumb; effortlessly reaping lovely rows of straight A’s, with the occasional B+ or B in the mix. Without breaking a sweat, they make their grade-gardens flourish with tulips and roses. I bend over backwards to plant one tulip and end up sprouting a dandelion.

I’ve never understood how this is possible, I only know that if I’m going to spend hours on my hands and knees, digging and scraping in the dirt, my grade-garden should speak for itself.