OP-ED: If I Had Known About Writing Sem I Would've Gone to Cornell

Senior year of high school was a rollercoaster ride. The college application was so stressful — taking the SAT, getting recommendation letters, writing all the essays. I got into some places and rejected from others, as everyone does. 

Deciding where to go turned out to be the hardest part. I was deciding between going to Cornell, where I’d gotten into School of Hotel Administration, and Penn. I ended up picking Penn because I wasn’t 100% that I wanted to go into hotel management and wanted to give myself the opportunity to experiment, take different classes, and eventually find a major that felt right for me.

Wow. Huge fucking mistake.

At my first meeting with my advisor she brings up this class called “writing seminar” that everyone has to take to graduate. Ok, cool. Sounds like it could be interesting. I’ve always wanted to become a better writer.

I took it freshman spring. My class sounded really cool, and the teacher was great. I had a really good time reading the book, actually, and the content was intriguing. I was feeling pretty good about the class for a variety of reasons.

Then we beat the book to death with a tire iron. It screamed, but its tortured wails fell on deaf ears. The syllabus sucked absolutely all the joy out of the class, the book, and me. What the fuck is a justificatory argument? Why the fuck have I spent the last 6 hours formatting my portfolio? How the fuck have I written more for this class than all my other classes combined? That whole class was such an obvious, egregious violation of the Geneva Conventions and enduring it was absolute torture.

I made a huge, huge mistake. I should’ve gone to Cornell, learned about hotels, and gotten a sweet job at the Four Seasons or some shit. Jesus Christ. It would’ve been sick. I could’ve been Mr. Moseby and yelled at kids for running through my lobby and all that jazz.

I didn’t even do well. Got a B+. Ugh.

Fuck writing sem.