Life is humiliating. For context, one should know that I signed up for an Intro to Computer Science course this semester. I wanted to fulfill my math credit, and I had heard that Computer Science was a great option for non-majors to do so. Naturally, I signed up for the lowest-level course, bought my books, and headed to the first day of class on Monday.
My friend Noel, a fellow English major, greeted me when I walked in. (She’s actually a Computer Science/English double major, so she knows her stuff.) I sat down next to her and started pulling out my notebooks.
“Dude!” she said. “How did you get in here? This is awesome!”
I, a genius, said: “What?”
“This class has like, pre-requisites. I thought it was majors only.”
“That is a problem,” I said.
At this moment, our conversation was cut short – the professor had arrived, and he began to hand out copies of the syllabus. He then started explaining Java, the programming language that we would learn this semester.
“Who here knows Python already?” he asked.
Everyone’s hands shot up, including Noel’s. My hands remained in my lap. Noel stared at me in awe, wondering how I had hacked my way into an upper-level Computer Science course after taking none of the pre-recs.
It dawned on me, then, that these were the smart people. Programming prodigies. The Computer Science elite. I was way out of my depth – I would have to switch courses.
Several other problems came my way in the following ten minutes:
- This course required a different textbook than the one I had bought.
- This course had a different lab time than the one I had signed up for.
- This course was full of computer geniuses, not novices like myself.
I began to think I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. How had I gotten so many details wrong about this course? I thought it was Intro-level! I thought lab was on Mondays at 2 o’clock! I thought the professor was named Paula!
Only once the (male) professor began to call roll did I realize the crucial fact: this was not my class. Classically, my course was due to meet in the same room…an hour after this one. I had showed up an hour early and sat through an hour of the wrong instructor. Obviously, this dawned on me too late. To my horror, the professor had finished calling roll, and was now looking at me with confusion.
“Did I call on you?” he asked.
“No. I just realized that this isn’t my class, but I didn’t want to interrupt, so I just sat here.”
“Oh.” He paused. “Well, you can certainly leave if you like.”
“Nah, uh, that’s okay.”
The other students averted their eyes. “I’ll just ride it out. We’ve only got ten minutes, anyway.”
Another pause. Somebody chuckled. I started to sweat.
“My class meets in here at 11:30,” I continued. “I showed up early on accident.”
“Ah,” said the professor. Then he continued presenting the syllabus.
As I said: life is humiliating. This is a fact. It is peak-level embarrassing to be a living person. And it never ends! I am fully convinced that similarly stupid things will happen to me until I die. There was an ounce of success in all this – I did make it to the correct class that day, exactly an hour after I had showed up for the wrong one.
And guess what? The professor had brought donuts. Check and mate.
