Registration

After pulling duty at the information table at registration, I came away shocked at how little progress has been made since I was a student, despite computers, online registration, and the rest. Long, long lines everywhere -- still. Frustration everywhere, still. A shame.

Not quite as chaotic as when I registered at UCLA, however. Tables set up in a huge gym, a table for each class, and you got in line for the classes you wanted. This is how I ended up taking Classical Greek! The dumb ignorant &*@!!$##!! credit transfer folks said I hadn't satisfied the language requirement despite being a Russian linguist in the Army Security Agency! I needed 3 more units of language. Jeez. So I thought, what the heck, I learned a little barroom German in the service, I'll take a term of German. Except that the line was blocks long.

But the adjacent table had nobody there! I didn't see a sign. Maybe I could register for German there. So I went to the empty table and said I wanted to register for German. They pointed off into the horizon. What are you? I asked. Classical Greek, was the answer. I looked at the long line -- and became a Greek scholar on the spot.

A wonderful class! Less than ten in the class, this at a multiversity. Moreover, I learned where e.e. cummings picked up his odd lyrical syntax like "with up so floating many bells down" -- this is normal Greek syntax! He studied classical Greek and surely picked it up there. But the benefits of Greek don't end there.

I loved Classical Greek, and my professor urged me to take second year. But I was in graduate and get out of Dodge mode, I just took language because I needed the credit.

I thought that was the end of it. It wasn't. Something over a year later I'm at the University of Oregon, a grad student, when I get a letter in the mail from UCLA. They want me to march with Oregon's undergrad seniors to be admitted into Phi Beta Kappa a year late for my graduating class at UCLA. What what what? This is absurd. But a phone call reveals they are serious, I've been admitted into Phi Beta Kappa at UCLA a year after the normal time, which is graduation. It didn't make sense because I had about a 3.3 average, too low for the honor society, and this low because I took, a 21-unit overload every term, picking out a course I'd just get a C in but take for the reading and discipline and lectures. Broadening my humanities education with all the energy of an ex math/science nerd.

So I march, get my Phi Beta Kappa pin, which I wore on my baseball cap till it was stolen ... but never figured out what was going on till I got my certificate from Phi Beta Kappa ... which was signed by my Greek teacher! She was the President of the Society!

So here's what happened. She thought I was hot shit. She was stunned the computer did not kick me out as a candidate for the Society when I graduated. So she took it upon herself to investigate. She discovered I indeed was on the Honors English Program, had an A average in my major, but for some reason took an overload each term, getting a C is things like Chinese Literature, Indian Lit, Introduction to the Opera, African Song Poems and whatnot. So she petitioned that an exception be made and I be admitted into Phi Beta Kappa and since she was the Prez at this time, she got her way.

Now isn't that a nice story? True, too.

It gets better. My favorite teacher was the late J. Robert Trevor, my lit teacher in a community college after I got out of the Army, who encouraged me to write. We stayed friends till he died. Shortly after I put my pin on my cap, Bob was in SF, between wives at the time, and met this wonderful lady at the bar ... and they started talking about this and that ... and got somewhat involved ... and lo! she was my Greek teacher, and I eventually came up in the conversation. So my fav teacher of all time picks up my Greek teacher, who got me into the Society. I mean, put that in a movie and have anyone believe it.

Not as dramatic as tutoring Sirhan Sirhan, perhaps, but a wild story all the same.

Isn't life grand?