Dangerous minds

To audit a class at UGA costs as much as to be enrolled for credit, and I was informed that the University requires students be enrolled as auditors—rather than unenrolled and just sitting in—because of school shootings and the events of September 11, 2001. When I was told this—by the instructor of a class I hoped to sit in on this summer—I made a face that I had deliberately designed to belie the fact that I was both flummoxed and dubious:  flummoxed because I didn't understand how my sitting in on a class had anything to do with tragic massacres, and dubious about there in fact being any connection between the two whatsoever. The instructor seemed to read my expression with the meaning I wrote into it, and she explained that "They want to know who's where." I felt at first that she was suggesting that I might perpetrate a tragic massacre, which made me really angry—not violently angry, but mad at my humanity being misunderstood. I had just told the instructor that I had a baby, a fact about myself that I think anyone who knows me in even the smallest way should be made aware of, because it is the single most significant thing about who I am as a person and also, by extension, who I am as a student, a shopper and a citizen. As a mother citizen I would never commit a massacre. Maybe the instructor only thought that I could be a victim in a shooting or a bombing, which makes the auditing rule no less ridiculous, because I have visible tattoos, a freakishly large mole, and a family. My family will know where I am when I go to class, and they would easily be able to identify my body in the event of a tragic massacre.

I'm unconvinced that the purpose of forcing students to be enrolled as auditors has as much to do with national security or school shootings as was suggested to me, and even if that is the purpose of the audit rule, it hardly explains why tuition and fees for auditing should be the same as enrollment for credit. If I hadn't exhausted my loans for the school year, I would gladly pay tuition and enroll for credit. I want credit. I can't afford credit.

When I was eighteen a severely pregnant lady on probation asked me for a ride home. The probation office was next door to where I worked at the time, and the day the lady asked for a ride home was a hot, sunny summer one. She told me that she only lived a few miles away—nothing for a car, but very far for a woman in the last weeks of her pregnancy. (I, incidentally, walked to and from class three days a week up until the very, very end of my pregnancy:  it was a round trip walk of three miles, and I'm proud to have done it, although it wasn't ever something I did without grumbling, even though it was my idea.) It has come up in a few conversations that I gave the pregnant lady on probation a ride home, and almost every interlocutor has regarded me as foolish for having done it. I think it would've been foolish if she had been a man, but he wouldn't have been pregnant and I wouldn't have therefore felt the same sort of "Poor you!" impetus. I am afraid of men I don't know, and even afraid of some that I do know, and I think it's reasonable for a woman to fear male strangers. But I don't think it's reasonable to be afraid of a pregnant woman who isn't Nancy Grace. And I think it sucks to have to pay to audit a class. If YouTube.edu starts charging, I might just have to do something about it. I'm totally kidding. I would do absolutely nothing about it.

Since I enjoy reflecting on my post titles, I would like to say that I think the title of this post is the funniest I've come up with in my personal history of blogging, which of course doesn't mean that it's funny.