Seussical Student Snapshots: Letter From a Bitter Collegian

The following tear-jerker poem is taken from a time when I sat at my desk during first year college, wondering how everything could be going so wrong.

Whose idea had it been, again, to pack my earthly belongings, switch time zones, and trade my life savings for a mile-high stack of textbooks?

I wish I still had energy. 

I wish I still had free-time.

I wish I still had wisdom teeth.

“Write a poem,” prescribed my mom as I broke from chemistry homework one night to pour out my woes over Skype. “But the first line has to be, ‘Gumption and gusto while going through goo.'”

“Please,” I whispered from beneath my avalanche of binders, “not another assignment.”

But she said she’d pay me for it.

And that’s why I wrote this poem, which I publish in hopes that it may one day hearten some fellow student caught in the clutches of a thousand due dates. You are never alone.

 

Letter from a Bitter Collegian: 

Gusto and gumption while going through goo,

Through all of these courses I’d rather not do,

Through physics and chemistry, calculus too?

I’ll never need physics to work at a zoo!

Just wanna do bio, but there in the path

To my life in the jungle

Lie heapings of math!

I’d rather use English–conjunctions! Infinitives!

Instead I get formulas.

Functions.

Derivatives.

I once used to laugh–enjoy fun and hilarity!

Now all I do is determine molarity.

I blame you, Isaac Newton, that I and my peers

Must be force-fed your thoughts in the primes of our years.

Well, so much for being the grateful homeschooler.

It was fun to rant, though.

Now hand me that ruler!

I must graph this function now, like it or not.

After finals, I needn’t give math one more thought. 

 

And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.

Colossians 3:24-25, NKJV