Two Classes

This week I have an early class and a late class. We are moderate types. Texas would label us liberals and France would see us as back-wards thinking backwoods hicks. But we are graduate students at a college that sends people to fancy British schools like Oxford and Cambridge and Edinburgh. Each class has ten students who make sounds when the professor says something stimulating. Keyboards beat rhythmically. Pens find the edge of mouths. Thoughts bubble and ferment. Early we analyze the Victorian ideals on gender, romanticism, and sports. Late we read the Midrash and ask what makes words poetic. The monikers of each get reduced: The Sports Class and The Poetry Class. It’s a small college, and these classes don’t get confused with others. My pride in my school, and colleagues is frustrated on some level by the facts: there is one woman in The Sports Class, and two men in The Poetry Class.