Out Among Humans

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

Some of my student friends come from countries with the highest birthrates on earth.

You’d never guess that from watching the mating rituals at our community college. They’re either invisible or they don’t exist. The birds are locked in their aviaries, the bees are in distant colonies, flirtations are checked at security. Where are the glands?

It’s a cultural thing, of course, and I’m totally blind to it. Those of us born and raised in the mainstream American culture have our own idea of what romance and courtship should look like. Even in recent decades, our millennial children have grown up with very public displays of affections from the likes of Archie, Betty and Veronica.

Census numbers don’t lie. Newcomers to our society continue to have larger than average families. There’s a whole lot of something going on here but I’m too midcentury and Middle American to recognize it.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

There’s a place in hell, just above invading hordes and dog-fight promoters, for people who devise multiple-choice quizzes.

These tests have a reputation for being easy but the chance of a lucky guess out of five choices is a sorry 20%—five should be a legal limit.

They like to build in gotcha tricks that are quicksand for students who studied but not quite enough and abandoned streets at night for kids who memorize but don’t understand

The term “non-cumulative” didn’t mean anything to me until it was combined with “exam.” A beautiful combination of words. You get tested only on what was covered since the last test, not from the beginning of the course. If this is the “dumbing down” of American education, then dumb away.

I watch professors watching us being tested. They’re being tested too. Nobody leaves this room alive without getting a grade.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

The good professor had ingenious ways to kept us alive during two-and-a-half hour science lectures.

When he had things to hand out, for example, he’d ask a student from each lab bench to come up to get them.

“Will the student with the most Kanye West downloads come up?” “Whoever has the cleanest sneakers, please come up!” We’d exchange looks around our table then one of us would self-consciously walk up to get the handouts.

I’d enjoyed a free ride, having perfected a don’t-pick-on the-old-guy scam. One afternoon the professor asked for “The person with the best hair.” My bench partners pointed to me. I was front and center, with the least best hair in the room.

Just Your Average 68-Year-Old College Freshman.

The clocks are firmly in control. They’re tenured and all but untouchable.

A clock in A204 decided there wasn’t time enough for the oceans—Atlantic, Pacific, etc., we blew off a million square miles of open water. The clock in C125 nixed kinships in favor of functionalism. A clock in the math lab aborted a slope-intercept demonstration, bad news for us remedial pukes.

They control the length of classes too. Periods scheduled to go an hour and a quarter last anywhere from ten minutes to several hours. Hands speed up when a lecture is inspiring but slow to a crawl when it’s a dud.

The chronometers (we call them that when they’re within hearing distance) command a position high on the back wall. Professors can see every time a student glances back to check the time—it’s like being heckled by a drunk. Something has to be done.