Swamped in Middle English

English 4180 - Middle English Literature - From the first day this class scared me. It was the fall semester of my third year in college, and also my first semester as an English Major. This class also happened to be my first upper division English course. I didn't know what to expect and to tell you the truth I was pretty scared to look at the syllabus the first day of class.

I immediately felt out of me league. The teacher graduated from high school early and went straight to Stanford where she proceeded to get her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. consecutively from the same university. She was intimidating and so was the reading list, nevermind the fact that Middle English is pretty much a different language.

The Seniors in the class were not intimidating. My impressions of them immediately gave me a bad taste in my mouth. They were way too pretentious for being only months away from their first degree. Now that I think about it, there is no right time in your life to be very pretentious. Anyway, they wouldn't give me the time of day when I would comment during class and disagree with them. Two of them in particular seemed like the biggest suck-ups in the world. One was a girl, and the other a guy, and they simply loved pointing out to everyone that they had already taken Senior Seminar (for English Majors) and that this entitled them to chime in with literary analysis courtesy of Freud, Lacan, and I can't remember who else. And how could I forget their flashy bindings and title pages of essays. Primping a paper like that has only ever said one thing to me, I'm a crappy writer, but look at my red binding, plastic covers, and my 72 font title page. That is great that they wanted to share what they had learned, but all through college if I had taken an advanced course in one department and then gone on to another course in the same department, but at a lower level, I would not use my knowledge from the advanced course to refute the argument of other students. First, that is rude. I am not the teacher. That is not my job. Third, I am not good at math. Fourth, the student who has not taken the advanced course most likely doesn't know what the hell I would be talking about. Fifth, I strongly believe that the student's journey through a swamp of academic fields should be directed by their professors (after five years at the University of Wyoming I feel I can leave this job solely up to the student and his/her professors). Sixth, after this class I never wanted to be like that guy and girl who spewed forth so much crap from their pedestals onto the university younglings that we either sat their quietly the rest of the semester, or even worse, completely ran away from our pursuit of an English Degree because we were afraid of those pretentious Seniors and didn't want to become one.

It turns out, I didn't run away. After a rough start in the class I pulled it together and even started getting some As on papers, but those weren't enough to lift me out of a B. A B was great though, it really was, and I knew after that class how I wanted to present myself to underclassmen once I was the graduating Senior.