When I was 24 I dropped out of school. For a precocious kid, it sure took me long enough.

I always did well at school but I never liked it. I remember being eager for it before I went to kindergarten, and then disappointed at its Romper Room silliness. I recall listening to older kids complain about algebra and longing to be initiated into the mysteries of a and b and x and y, only to be underwhelmed by the math when it became part of my day.

But I kept attending. In the suburbs in the second half of the 20^th century, a bright female of the middle class didn’t have other options. It might have been okay if school hadn’t been so boring, if it hadn’t taken up so much of my time, if it had provided better teachers. I don’t understand our culture’s reverence-act about teachers – like they’re saintly types, giving up their time and potential income for the good of others. The fact is, we all had about 66 teachers between kindergarten and high school completion, and at most half a dozen of them were impressive. I remember percentages: 6 out of 66 is only 9%. Kids deserve more than that.

I managed to enjoy college though. I was one of 20,000 in Berkeley, so nobody was supervising me. I got to range around the English department and also explore old languages. The English curriculum included literary criticism but I thought most of that was gossip and bullshit, so I worked at imitating the assigned authors instead.

It was gratifying. So after some travel and my wedding I applied to grad school. I attended two quarters.

OMG. Back to bullshit. In 1973 at least, the Ph.D. program in English at Cal was a teacher mill. I couldn’t find anyone who was interested in learning or thinking. The one good instructor I interacted with during that half-year reeled his face away from me and blurted “Who let you in here?”

The final straw was the honors renaissance lit class. We read sonnets and The Fairie Queen. The prof was tenured and respected in the field. This is no exaggeration, kids: I was the only one in a class of 20 who perceived that The Fairie Queen has a plot. Everyone else was busy hunting for levels of allegory like they were Easter eggs.

I finally visited the professor in his office. I showed him the error in the one bit of lit crit I read for the class (“What?” he remarked. “How can that be? This was written decades ago, and no one else ever noticed the mistake”) and I commented that of course a critic couldn’t appreciate a sonnet without trying to write one. I mean, it doesn’t have to be a good sonnet, but only by attempting one could an individual grasp the possibilities and limitations of the form.

He looked at me blankly. I said “You’ve of course experimented with sonnets yourself, and…” and I noticed his head shake. “Huh?”

“I don’t write them,” he said. “I teach them.”

And I was out of there.