H
ERE’S a story. In college I entered the spring
semester of my freshman year on academic
probation. There wasn’t one reason this
happened. There were many.
I had signed up for a computer science class called Digital
Security with no programming knowledge. I had signed up
for a Modern Media course with no understanding of how
to decipher Foucault, Derrida, or Lévi-Strauss. And then
there was the geographic whiplash and identity crisis of the
move itself. I came from a high school in rural Oregon with
a graduating class of fourteen, and I experienced severe
culture shock transitioning to Brown University, stepping
from the bush league to the Ivy League. I earned money
in high school building barbed wire fences, changing out
irrigation pipe, and shooting marmots for ranchers upset
about the holes dug in their alfalfa fields, and my stan-
dard uniform was Wranglers and shitkickers. The very
first thing my roommate said to me, when I walked in the
door, was, “Oh my God—I’m rooming with a hick.” Also:
There was so much beer. Also: There were so many women
(remember that my graduating class in high school was
fourteen). So many late nights and later mornings passed,
and winter break came like a white oblivion, and I emerged
out the other side wondering what the hell had happened
to me.
The letter from the dean warning me that I would lose
my financial aid if my grades didn’t improve shamed me
deeply. I was disgusted with myself and determined to do
better. I set up a meeting with my adviser—who was also
the computer science professor who had failed me—hoping
he could coach me along. He was a small man, but his head
seemed overlarge because of his wide mouth and mop of
hair. His office had floor-to-ceiling windows, and we were
high up, maybe on the tenth floor, and I remember feeling
dizzy and exposed.
When I asked him what he thought I should do, he gave
me a pitying look and said, “You know, not a lot of people
have the guts to say this...but college isn’t for everyone.
It’s okay if you decide this isn’t the right path. Because...it
really doesn’t seem like this is working out.”
I know what I’d say to him now, but I didn’t know whatBENJAMIN PERCY’s third
story collection, Suicide
Wood s, is forthcoming in
October from Graywolf
Press. He is also the author of
four novels and a craft book,
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
(Graywolf Press, 2016). He
writes comics for Marvel and
DC Comics, and his run on
X-Force launches this fall.HARNESSING THE GENERATIVE POWER OF NOThe Turn
Life
THE LITERARY51 POETS & WRITERS^ar
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