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Until I got to college, I was a terrible student.
My undiagnosed panic disorder made processing information impossible. Even with extra time, my anxiety overrode everything.
As a result, I did poorly and got bad grades, which caused concern and led to years of IQ testing, tutoring, and whispers about learning disorders. This, in turn, led me to believe I was incapable of learning—that I was, in fact, stupid.
It wasn’t until my junior year of high school, when I fell in love with the smartest guy in school (he received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 10th grade to research and write a paper on the Civil Rights Movement!), that someone finally challenged my deeply held conviction that I was an idiot.
It was from him I realized I was capable of learning, and it was from learning I gained confidence. I’ve spent my entire adult life dedicated to the pursuit of understanding what I don’t know.
When I got to college and received my first syllabus for a film theory class, I had a religious awakening. The syllabus was a magical portal into worlds I hadn’t known existed, and I could not get enough of them.
I still can’t.
Today, as a bonus, I’m sharing a syllabus of the wildly prolific (in both marriage and writing—four wives!) postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme compiled for his students at the University of Houston.
Lovers of syllabi and fiction—rejoice!
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