I am thirty and I just decided to start going to college. Everyone else is between seventeen and nineteen. I come into class, go to my table, and start taking my stuff out of my bag. There are two guys sitting there talking.

Guy #1: “I don’t care what size she is as long as she likes [Popular Space Series]. Oh! And I’m not really into white chicks.”

Guy #2: “Yeah, I don’t like white girls, either.”

Then, they look at me and realize I’m there and happen to be white.

Guy #2: “No offense.”

Me: “Huh? Oh, it’s fine. I don’t like dating little kids.”

My son attended a school with a large foreign student body. This happened his freshman year early in the semester during a lecture. The student next to my son was Asian; this is important, or I wouldn’t call it out.

My son noticed he was looking back and forth between the whiteboard and my son’s notes. Finally, my son asked the guy what was going on. The guy said, “I can’t read what the professor is writing.”

The professor was writing in cursive. The guy had only learned Latin letters as block letters. Since my son was taking notes in block, he let the guy copy off him.

I am thirty and I just decided to start going to college. For what I want to do, I need so many math classes. In my class, the oldest person is the teacher, who told us she was eighty, and then me. Everyone else is between seventeen and nineteen.

I’m sitting at my table with a few of these teens and they’re talking about how long they spend on a math problem. Then, they ask me:

Kid #1: “Hey, how long do you spend on a math problem?”

Me: “It depends on the problem. Some of them are only a few seconds, and others can be like 45 minutes.”

Kid #2: “Really?! You spend 45 minutes on a problem?! I just skip it!”

Me: “Do you pay rent?”

Kid #1 & #2: “No.”

Me: “Do you pay credit card bills, phone bills, medical bills, or your car insurance?”

Kid #1 & #2: “No.”

Me: “Are you paying for college on your own?”

Kid #1 & #2: “No.”

Me: “I am. I have no choice but to get good grades.”

I am thirty and I just decided to start going to college. For what I want to do, I need so many math classes. In my class, the oldest person is the teacher, who told us she’s eighty, and then me. Everyone else is between seventeen and nineteen.

I’m sitting at my table with three of these teens. They’re all talking. One boy looks at me and says something and is really excited about it. He asks a question. I stare at him blankly.

Me: “Fo shizzle my nizzle?”

Boy #2: *Confused pause* “What?”

Me: “I have no idea what you are saying and it’s the only hip thing I know!”

Boy #2: “Hip…?”

When I was in Spanish 3, one of our assignments was to translate a children’s book from English into Spanish. She suggested we get a book that’s a beginning reader level. My teacher’s only rule was we couldn’t use a Dr. Seuss book because the rhyming structure and the made-up words would be too difficult to translate. This was an in-class assignment we would be doing all the next week.

I will say, I was not a fan of this teacher. There were times I felt like she singled me out. I didn’t like her teaching style, and her personality clashed with mine. She also kept calling me a name that wasn’t my name, and I insisted she call me by my name, and that didn’t help things. I feel like the only reason she didn’t give me a harder time was that I was quiet, I did my work on time, I got mostly As and Bs, and I actually paid attention in class.

I went home and looked through my old children’s books and settled on a book about a bunny who had an identity crisis. It wasn’t written by Dr. Seuss and it was a beginner reader level, so I thought I was good to go.

The next time I had class, I brought in the book so I could do the assignment. I placed the book on my desk and, while I was getting paper out, one of my classmates saw the book on my desk and said, way too loud, “You’re not supposed to have a Dr. Seuss book!”

On the top right corner of the cover was a small picture of the Cat in the Hat with a seal that said, “Beginner Books: I can read all by myself!” The back cover of the book had some information about the Beginner Books, as well as a bigger picture of the Cat in the Hat. 

Beginner Books was created by Dr. Seuss, and most — if not all — Dr. Seuss books are Beginner Books, but not all Beginner Books are Dr. Seuss books. All it means is that it’s easy to read.

I tried to explain this to my teacher and I pointed out the extremely feminine author’s name, but my teacher refused to listen and made me pick another book.

A different classmate had brought in three or four books in case someone else couldn’t find a book to use, and she offered to let me use one for the assignment. I agreed, only because my teacher wouldn’t give me an extension and I would be wasting classtime doing nothing otherwise. 

I ended up with a B on the assignment. I still feel like if it had been anybody else, she would’ve let them translate the original book. This teacher was the reason I gave up studying Spanish and switched to Latin for my last two years of high school and took ASL in college.