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A Fatal Mistake

Smithereens

Do I contradict myself (i do not, but i do; and doing, don't)

Here is Death's other tanning salon; here

I sit, admiring my nether-face in the mirror below.

When the log rolls over, we will all be dead.

When the log

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When

We

Dead.

Flush."'

I bet you think I realized my tragic error somewhere among this tenured lunatic's aforementioned and subsequent rantings. You're wrong. I realized it after he finished his last poem--something about watching his cat eat a slug--and the people around me gave him a standing ovation.

The wild applause not only shattered my hope that this man was an impostor and the real poet was tied up somewhere in a closet, but also confirmed what I had already begun to fear.

I'm in the wrong department.

I soon discovered just how boring it was to write paper after paper about the use of the word "the" in "Song of Myself" and such rot and have often cursed the fateful decision which led me into courses where I had to read Pilgrim'f Progreff or anything by Ezra Pound.

People in other departments and other walks of life have wasted little time rubbing salt in my wounds--from a freshman roommate who snickered "English, eh? Goin' for the big bucks, ain'tcha?" to my financee parents, who equated my joining the English Department to joining a motorcycle gang as far as their daughter's welfare was concerned.

I THOUGHT I was alone in my suffering, but experience has since taught me that everyone here is in the wrong deparment. The problems of each student within his chosen curriculum are nothing compared to the derision he suffers at the hands of students from other departments.

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