Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

It was midmorning and it was cold. I was uncomfortable for many reasons, one of them being that it was about 95 degrees in the room and I was still wearing my winter coat. Shifting in my chair I kept my voice even and gentle, repeating cliched truisms:

"It's not you, it's me."
"You'll be better off without me. You'll see. Really."
Even: "If you love something let it go..."

He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose (discreetly wiping away a tear or two, I'm sure), and told me no less than five stories about how he had changed lives. Real lives. Lives from Vietnam, Canada, West Africa, even Des Moines. This is true love, people: commitment, integrity, communication, honor.

I nodded. I stiffled my urge to bolt. This was worse than a lot of breakups I've had.

This, of course, was the charade I had to suffer through in order to drop a class here at good ol' U of I. None of that faceless Internet nonsense. Why should you be able to simply click "Add" or "Drop" in order to add or drop a course when you can have increasingly awkward encounters with professors who will 1) try to guilt trip you into staying in their class 2) look personally offended that you want to drop their course and/or 3) walk you to the door with a wounded air and, martyr-like, shake your hand with one of the dreaded limp-fish-hands? All of this for one shabby signature on a piece of green paper that needs an actual litany of different administrative signatures (professor of dropped class, professor of added class, advisor, dean of college, mother of dean of college, best friend in first grade, pony you once wanted but never received, etc.)

So in honor of my course breakups this semester I leave you with the unparalleled break up song by the hit band Nazareth: