CLEAN UP LOUISIANA

I had this student in my morning class, K. I liked him. Partly because he reminded me of a PhD student I used to know named Andy, someone I had a corpus callosum crush on, and party because he just seemed like a genuine person.

He had decent attendance for a 7:30 a.m. class but about seven weeks into the quarter I stopped seeing him. The other day he came into class after everyone had left, with a blue slip for me to sign. I was surprised that he wanted to drop the class since he was doing so well. He told me was withdrawing from all of his classes this quarter. He had that whole brave face thing about him, so I didn’t press for details why. But when I told him that I was sorry he was leaving and that the class would miss him, he produced a half laugh mixed with a look of regret and said, “Yea well, I gotta go clean up Louisiana.”

Somehow, I knew exactly what he was talking about.