(Alternately titled: Why I’m no longer allowed to choose my own classes.)

I’m only three weeks into the semester and already I dropped a class. Turns out my “easy” class turned into my hardest. So after much debate, I dropped it. Also…I may or may not have missed all three classes. I know…I’m awesome.

So I said au revoir to French and bonjour to a professional writing course. I spent a couple of hours trying to find a course that would fit in with my crazy schedule.

So I missed the first couple classes since I registered late. I checked online and no books were required. This was turning out to be a pretty sweet course. Then things took a turn for the worst…

Thinking the class began at noon, I hauled ass from my previous class to the other building. I was a minute or two late, but was surprised to see everyone in their seats and class in session. I walked in, grabbed a seat in the back and was greeted with a hello from the teacher. She had a puzzled face and I returned the look. She asked if she could help me and that’s when I realized I was in the wrong class.

In general I tend to avoid drawing attention to myself, so this really made me uncomfortable. I ended up leaving and having my mom log into my school account to double check my schedule. Of course class began at 12:30. Of course.

So at 12:30 I go into class and I notice that there are a lot of Asian people in there. I figured it was cool…foreign people need to write right? I pick up the handouts I missed from earlier classes and after reading over them, I felt it was a little…remedial. Class begins and I realize that not many people speak English very well. I don’t know when I realized that this was an international course. It could have been when she said “international” or it could have been after reading the syllabus.

So I’m in an ESL class. Some how I missed that in the course description when I signed up. I figured that this would be my easy class because, well, I speak English. I speak it pretty well actually. I’ve made it clear to her that I was only there for financial aid credits. She has confirmed with me that I am not an international student. So why does she keep calling on me?!

I read paragraph after paragraph and I answered question after question. Is she just tired of teaching non-English speaking students or does she secretly hate me for taking this course? More importantly, are these students going to talk shit about me in another language?!