Suzie Bright Eyes
When I enrolled in my second college (which was technically more like my 0743067290 college, but for sake of the story, we’ll call it College #2, the college where I graduated from), they, unlike the other colleges I’d attended, had a Philosophy credit. I had Philosophy products and philosophies (i.e. “do not get out of bed before noon WHENEVER possible”), but I’d never intended to take a class in philosophy on purpose.
Let’s face it: I’m not the sort of person who wants to sit around debating what it really means when a tree falls in a forest. I’m too busy plowing through the forest in my mother-humping baby pink Hummer.
(okay, that’s a lie. I don’t own a Hummer.)
Your Aunt Becky is simply not a philosopher. It’s just not in her nature. Books that don’t have colorful pictures or swear words don’t much appeal to me. I tend to tune out when books have long unnecessary words and sentences that exist simply to exist, and the smaller and denser the text, the more I’m likely to use the book as a drool cloth.
But that doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.
Apparently, however, walking into my Philosophy of Religion class dressed not in the requisite black trench coat and stringy black hair made me an instant misfit. Perhaps I should have stopped showering and started shopping at Hot Topic. Because when I walked in, the sneers of the obvious philosophy students were palpable.
I took a seat, grabbed the book out listlessly and took out a notebook where I drew myself with a noose around my neck. That, at least, should have given me SOME sense of goth cred, but no.
The professor was interesting and I always liked to hear him talk, so the class, save for my classMATES, was tolerable.
By the end of the semester, their disdain for me was palpable (it was prophetic of how nursing school would be for me the following year, but I didn’t know that yet). Particularly full of vitriol was the guy that sat in front of me. Maybe he thought I was cute, maybe he thought I was a vapid bitch, maybe he thought I should be sacrificed as a sheep, I don’t know. I called him Suzie Bright Eyes.
But the day that we were supposed to get our final papers back, worth something like 65 percent of our grade, he was incredibly nervous. Clacking his fingers and drumming them on the long tables, he jabbered on to the guy next to him about how this would determine his grade for the class.
Our teacher was a notoriously hard grader, it seemed, and he seemed terrified that he would somehow fail and be unable to progress to the following class (this was a really high level philosophy class and how *I* wound up in it is anyone’s guess).
On our other papers, I’d gotten 99%’s so I wasn’t very worried. It just didn’t seem worth the extra anxiety, especially since I was lazy and tired. 50 million red pygmy hedgehogs didn’t give a shit, you know? It was fucking FINALS week and I had a 2 year old. I’d already DONE the best that I could do.
He got his paper back first and must not have done well because he looked miserable. His skinny, slimy pony-tail shook with emotion and his pale skin blotched red. I felt sorry for him, despite that he’d been a real ass to me for months before.
I got mine back and noted my perfect 100% with a “GOOD JOB” scrawled across the top and smiled to myself. I may look like this:
but I am a good student. Love me, hate me, say what you want about me, but I am an annoyingly good student.
So, Suzie Bright Eyes flips his greasy body around, glares at me and addresses me face first, instead of through snide whispers about “how they let ANYONE into the philosophy program these days.”
“What did YOU get?” he spat at me in a shockingly high voice, clearly hoping to rub a higher grade in my stupid-looking face. I could clearly see his “C” paper from my seat now.
Without waiting for a response, he looked down at my paper and noting the perfect score, his face literally dropped like a thousand toothpicks had been removed at once. A fwwwump!
You could literally see the wheels in his head turn as he simply didn’t know how to react. “How did YOU get this grade?” was the best he could sputter out, the disdain dripping from his every word. If a word could roll it’s eyes, each of his did.
I don’t know what he wanted me to say, but I’d had it with him and the rest of the class. I might look like a fucking idiot, but I’m not. I don’t have to wear all black and read Nietzsche in my spare time to understand philosophy.
So I said, for the first time since I entered the class, exactly what I thought.
“Fuck you, Suzie Bright Eyes.”
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If you haven’t signed up to pledge your allegiance to my book, I’d love it if you did. Just go here, drop in your name and email address and I’ll send out a chapter just as soon as The Daver shows me how. Tell your friends, your co-workers and your IMAGINARY co-workers!
Your Aunt Becky needs help and feels like a douche asking (sorry).
Girl you look stoned in that pic. I wish I felt how you look. Oh yeah, and a “Fuck You, Suzy Bright Eyes” from me too. There’s one in every class.
That is going to be my new mantra henceforth and forevermore. And now, I’m going to express love for your book. (Got distracted before but will do now.)
Girl you look stoned in that pic. I’ll have whatever you’re having. Oh yeah, and a “Fuck You, Suzy Bright Eyes” from me to. There’s one in every class.
That picture is hysterical…and I love “Fuck you, Suzie Bright Eyes.”
LOL! I hated philosophy class. Mine began with a teach puttting a chair on his desk and asking “how do we know this is a chair?” Because it is a fucking chair! Better question.. “Why do you question it’s chairness?” I so don’t do deep meaningful questions about the obvious.
Oh man, priceless. Fuck You, Suzie Bright Eyes for sure!!
I imagine he’s much happier now that he’s assistant manager at Ruby Tuesday’s.
(PS–I did the book thingy for you the other day. XOXO)
He’s snidely serving burgers and fries to people now. LUCKY him.
Hey – did you change your logo in your header since yesterday? I’m sure it was less colourful. VERY nice though. I like this one better. Which reminds me – how’s that tattoo coming?
The tattoo is HALF finished and yes, the logo is changed. We’re a work in progress, baby. In progress 🙂
I think “fuck you” is the most admirable philosophy there is. The Suzy Bright Eyes part is just a bonus.
Oh, and don’t leave us hanging, Bex; how did the rest of the class react?
Everyone else sort of ignored us both and slunk away. I think I set the curve. Motherfuckers.
That was an awesome story and I wish I could have moments like that in other areas of my life just so I could say a big fat FU!
And this reminds me that I am so glad I graduated college sooo long ago!
Sadie at heyMamas
How many drag queens were scraped clean to gather enough glitter for that picture? If you scrape the glitter off a drag queen and there are no uplights, does I Will Survive still play on the speakers?
I look HOT.
That is poetic, in itself. The pic is fantastic too. How much did you win in the bet?
That was a Halloween costume, thankyouverymuch, where I went as “Ghetto.”
Any woman who uses the words vitriol and vapid in the same paragraph is my hero! I love intelligent women. (not in a creepy way.)
I only WISH it was in a creepy way.
Love me, hate me, say what you want about me, but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to If You Seek Amy.
Awesome!
Which is only the best song ever.
I didn’t fit in with the preppy little gals in my major. I never said “Fuck you, Suzie Bright Eyes” to them but I sure as heck thought something similar.
No, I never fit in. In fact, I’ve never really fit in. I don’t know WHAT I was supposed to do with my life. Hm.
Your “fuck you, suzie bright eyes” reminded me of Legally Blonde.
(You know when she runs into that guy in the hall ans he says “how did YOU get into harvard” and she said “What, like it was hard?!?!?”)
Love it.
What’s funny is this little back and forth is EXACTLY what happened to me over, and over, and over, and over for YEARS. I must REALLY look stupid.
It’s so hard for people to understand that rediculously hot chicks like us are also wicked smart
I see nothing philosophical about not bathing and walking around with dirty hair. Maybe I should do an interpretive dance depicting my dislike of body odor and germs…
Just kidding. That shit’s never going to happen.
If you did an interpretive dance about that, I’d marry you.
I loved Philosophy! I was about 2 classes away from a Philosophy minor. I know why you’re good at Philosophy, even if you don’t. All you need is the ability to bullshit heavily in writing. Ding! Aunt Becky Wins! 🙂
I took a Philosophy of Film class, and that was actually way cool. We didn’t have any of the trench-coated posers at my school, so there were no idiots with superiority complexes. So glad you told that idiot to fuck off!
I can’t believe it took me so LONG.
I thought philosophy students didn’t care about their grades because grades are more a reflection of how/where the institution thinks they should be in comparison to their peers rather than a true representation of how well they can deep think and argue about meaningless crap.
Apparently, he was a philosophy nerd.
I’m pretty sure that I may have dated that guy’s brother.
We ALL dated that guy’s brother. Which is why it’s funny.
I really should dredge up some awesome college stories….if I could remember any as awesome as telling your Goth buddy what to do with his angst. Sweetness.
This was probably the 9729461 time someone was an asshole to me based on how I looked and the grades I got.
Oh, THAT guy – I hate him.
i hate books, movies, and tv without swear words, too! and i never tune out with your writing style — it’s the kind that engages!
and i’ll be the millionth person to say it, but i know it’s gonna feel fanfuckingtastic: fuck you, suzy bright eyes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Those freakin’ red pygmy hedgehogs. You can count on them for exactly NOTHING.
I think your Mr. Bright Eyes might have been in my grad-level Irish lit class. If I’m not mistaken, he was the one who kept yelling that Yeats was misunderstooooooooood.
I majored in accounting.
That’s all I’ve got.
That sounds a lot like the philosophy class I took…but mine was the philosophy of logic. I found the class fascinating, but the students ridiculous. And I’ll tell you, they didn’t like preppy, smiley me much either.
I didn’t ever tell them where to go, but I did ruin the curve for the rest of them by getting a perfect 100% on every. single. test.
I’m still proud of that one, can you tell?
Why WAS his name Suzy Bright Eyes?
I love people who think they are so “deep” and existentialist. They might spend hours just thinking but they can’t do shit like clean an oven or pay a bill. It’s just too BASIC for them.
THANK YOU. I had the worst week ever, and I needed the laugh. Somehow I picture Rainbow Brite when I hear “Suzy Bright Eyes”. Or the lead singer of the band, Bright Eyes. *Pauses while you do a google image search.*
I love that picture of you! Im totally humping my monitor as we speak. Oh crap, now Ive got glitter lip gloss on my pants
“Our teacher was a notoriously hard grader, ”
That reminded me of when I was in one of my education classes “Teaching Reading and Writing in Elementary” or something like that.
We had to write a few papers for that class. Most of the assigned papers were philosophy papers. Write your philosophy on education….Write your philosophy on this or that….it went on and on.
The good news, was that I had lots of classes before this class and I saved EVERY SINGLE paper I had ever written. Most of my previous teachers would correct anything on the paper or they would add suggestions on what would make the paper better.
So, I basically recycled all my papers for this class. Well this teacher was the worst teacher ever (thank GOD it was a very full class and we actually had 2 teachers, one was good) and she firmly believed in the bell curve. She always picked X papers to make an A, X papers to make a B…….all the way down to an F.
Every single paper I turned into her, she gave me 20% or lower. I bawled my eyes out the first few times. I went to her during office time and asked her what I should do to write a paper that would get an A. She just started yelling at me YELLING that I was not college material and that I really should rethink my career path because I don’t need to be in the classroom teaching other kids. YELLING YELLING
I left bawling my eyes out and the next day went to the other teacher (Who also taught high school down the road from where I lived) I showed her all the papers that the other teacher gave me a 20% (or lower) on and she just shook her head. She kept them, regraded them, and gave them back to me. I ended up with an A in the class, but was instructed to give ALL papers to her in the future and not the mean mean woman.
Oooh, I loved the one philosophy class I took in college. I got to debate the existence of God and also the whole abortion issue. Good times.
Nice layout! (I’m a bit behind on my blog-reading.)
One of my philosophies is: People take themselves wayyyy too seriously.
Hey, I gave you an Honest Scrap award! 🙂
It used to irritate the hell out of me when certain men couldn’t imagine the reality that certain women leave them in their academic dust. Now, it’s just kind of funny. For some strange reason I can’t quite wrap my head around, I wish I’d said something like this back in my college days:
“How did YOU get a better grade than I did?”
“I fucked the professor. Oh … you DIDN’T??”
HAH – he sounds like Johnnie Depp. But creepier.
Now before anyone goes ballistic about how hot JD is, remember, he is from KENTUCKY. Where the fuck did he learn how to talk like he does? Alright he is an actor, but most actors dont use fake accents when they are giving interviews. He is a total SUZIE BRIGHT EYE!
Kinda reminds me of my graduation party experience in high school. I had the opposite problem as you. I got good grades (setting the curve type) and everyone knew it, so they all thought I must be incredibly dull and boring and study a lot. I didn’t, by the way, high school was stupid and way too easy in my small backwoods town. I’m no genius, but it didn’t take much then. So anyways, no one wanted to be friends with the “nerd” unless it was test time, then everyone sat near me, hmmm, wonder why? I really thought they were all idiots (I was mostly right) so I didn’t hang out with them, ever. I had better things to do than get drunk and screw in the woods. Yep, every weekend’s agenda. For some reason, I felt like being social at the graduation party so I went and had a few drinks and people looked at me like I had turned green and grew horns. “You drink??!!!???” I pretty much told them, “Yeah, who knew, I was cool all along, you just sucked too much to be my friend. Now I’m leavin’ here and kissing you all good fucking riddance!!!” I think I said it in somewhat nicer words, but the message was fairly clear. They were stunned into silence. Felt kinda good. Fuck you Suzy Bright Eyes indeed!
good for you 🙂 if i haven’t said it already, i love the new digs!
For a thousand reasons, you are my hero. Make this post a thousand and one.
If you think that’s annoying, try having an egotistical jackass Chinese kid (who can’t properly SPEAK English) sit you down during one of those bullshit peer editing groups and attempt to make you feel like your bomb-ass English paper is all wrong. Cue my eye rolling and pretending his opinion was valid.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think peers should have anything to do with each other. I can hardly remember having many “peers” that I didn’t want to throat punch.
In short, you are my hero….and I want to grow balls as big as yours one day, and put some douchetard in their place.
Oh, I LOVE IT!
I am beginning to identify more and more with Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blond. Only she was the different looking chick from the normal student and in your case, I believe you were dumped in with the strange cases. 😉
I love that eye shadow. I also love that you called that douche bag out. LOVE IT!
OMG! That sounds like my College #1! It’s a Big 10 school that, to some people, is a-maizin! But someone actually said to me that if they let me in, they’d let anyone in. Yeah, I WISH I would have come up with you said. Strangely enough, this reminds me of Elle in Legally Blonde.
My dear, I simply love what you’ve done with the place… and woe be it to anyone who underestimates Aunt Becky.
😉
Dude. Not only are you an annoyingly good student, but you can rock the fuck out of some pearlescent baby blue eye shadow.
What the fuck?
This reminds me of a class I took in grad school. The class was actually at a divinity school, although I was not in divinity school (oh, the joy of cross-listing). I was a first-year graduate student and a little bit of a shit as a result, but, in all fairness, I was also one of the only people doing the reading, so, yes, I asked a lot of questions and made a fair amount of comments. On the last day of class, the professor was late, and I can’t remember the context, but one of the divinity students turned around and told me that basically I was a suck-up and needed to shut up. Those were not the words used, but that was the sentiment. Now, I may be Jewish, but I didn’t think it was very Christian of her to say that.
Love the blue eye shadow. Love that you told the dick to fuck off. Love you.
Now let’s get you that book deal.
Your eyeshadow in that photo is way too shimmery for my liking. It’s a good thing I like doing it with the lights off.
Your story totally had a soundtrack for me….tell me you have seen the “literal version” of the VH1 video TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART. They excel in the “suzie bright eyes” category.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA
From one annoyingly good student to another: YAY!
(I wish I’d been in that class with you. We could have had a good time.) (That sounded dirty. You may take it any way you like.) (As did that, I realise.)
Oh… I remember my Suzie Bright Eyes. It was an accounting class and I was an art major. For some odd reason I had the best scores in the class. Never would I brag. After each test I would hear… what did you get from “Suzie”? When he heard it was an “A” I got the sneer. Well if you didn’t want to know then why did you ask?!
I wish I would have said, F you Suzie!
Ug. I hated my philosophy classes. The only one that didn’t make me feel stupid was Philosophy of Language, because i’d already taken linguistics and English grammar, which had covered most of the bases already. Ugh.
Good for you! I am one of those people who is uncomfortable in a room that has more than three people in it. (Which is why I love you, dear Internet) And proving anyone wrong, anyone at all, about my right to be there and my ability to keep up, that would keep me going for weeks. Personally, I hated philosophy, but I never entirely got it. Perhaps it’s because I was 20 and spent most of that semester watching the entire “Twin Peaks” series, which made Descartes a little less interesting. But making it through Chemistry with a B? That was one of my life’s great accomplishments.
Good for you for saying what I’m sure at least some of them were thinking!
yap, you are right….