Academic probation round two here I come

I’m a senior. Surely I should have my shit together, grades in order, prepped and ready to go suck off an employer in an interview to land the career of my dreams. And I did have my grades in order. The past two semesters I made the dean’s list. Impressive, right? Classes were compelling, my interest was piqued. I was engaged in classes I truly wanted to take. And then this past Spring rolled around, and I saw I still had a general education requirement to fulfill, quantitative formal reasoning – the required math class.

A little personal history.

I’m right brained, left-handed. At the age of about twelve or thirteen I gave up on math and dived headfirst into discovering my writing voice. I enjoy that process to this day. I got by in my high school math classes just enough to not raise any red flags. The borderline C- was enough and I ran away as fast as I could. Fuck numbers and equations, I was done. College would be my promise land, a place free from the torturous nausea of attempting a math problem. My philosophy became simple: There are plenty of people in this world that get off fondling around with numbers. Bless their hearts, someone needs to do it, but it’s not me, and that’s OK.

Pitt, however, had different plans.

When college rolled around, my work ethic toward math related subjects had all but completely vanished. Addition, subtraction, multiplication – oh wait, there’s a calculator on my phone, and it does all the easy math I’ll ever really need to know.

Second semester of college freshman year I failed my first course. The following semester I was put on academic probation. The administration ordered me to be gagged, shackled to a spiky metal bed, and for hot wax to be dripped on me while asking horrifying questions like, ‘How many hours do you study before an exam?’ and ‘Do you feel anxiety while taking exams?’ Kinky stuff, just wasn’t for me – too much leather.

Anyways, thanks math. Thanks Pitt.

Skip forward three more years to present-day and here I am again (I’ve always thought time was more circular than linear), failing to rekindle any brain cell or inkling of care toward my most dreaded subject. But the University of Pittsburgh insists I take this class. Why? Probably because they want a reason to squeeze an extra couple thousand dollars out of me.

Am I just being cynical? Yes and no. Schools are businesses, focused on profit. They care far less about a “well-rounded” education than they do about my tens of thousands of dollars in loaned money I cough up each semester. And what better way to wring out more money than have required classes to take, even if those classes explicitly have NOTHING to do with your interests and/or your major?

Yes, student debt is real. No surprise. If you’re reading this, likely you have an inflating debt. While the university will pass the buck and say it’s an issue of government funding or some bullshit like that, what they’re really doing is failing to turn the lens of scrutiny upon themselves to truly evaluate their own hand in creating this new wave of indentured servants: college students.

While I may be a stubborn student refusing to bend to the will of the university, and this may read as a whiny lament about not wanting to fulfill a “general education requirement,” I still maintain that I’m the innocent one here. And I certainly have no hand in issuing students a debt they’ll be plagued with until retirement. I’m calling it out. That’s all on you, Pitt, my precious Alma Mater.

Next semester (if I’m still a student at the university) I’ll be forced once again to fulfill my quantitative formal reasoning requirement. I’m aiming for a seventy percent, and not a percentage point more.