Worst College Student Ever

I was the worst college student ever. But before we get to that, let’s roll back to the fall of 1979 when I began my illustriously doomed university career. I was seventeen, an Olympic weightlifting champ and a competitive bodybuilder, laser-focused on my singular dream: win Mr. Universe, crush Mr. Olympia, and then ride that shredded glory to a personal gym empire in the Bahamas. My priorities were crystalline: achieve a beautiful body, maintain that body in a setting conducive to permanent oil-and-Speedo living, and ensure that the only clothes I wore for the rest of my life were posing trunks.

This goal, as impractical as it was narcissistically vivid, never impressed my recently divorced mother. She called me a nincompoop every time I talked about opening a tropical gym. When I insisted my friends — Frank Zane, Tom Platz, Robbie Robinson, and the rest of the pantheon I knew only from the glossy pages of Muscle & Fitness — would come visit, she replied, “Those aren’t your friends. They’re from your magazines. I’m not stupid.”

Contrary to the meathead stereotype, I graduated high school with straight A’s. But that was less a testament to my intellect and more an indictment of a system that funneled students through a bureaucratic sleepwalk. One of my classes was called “Money Matters.” We learned how to write checks and keep a budget. This was first-grade math masquerading as life skills. Another gem was “Popular Lit,” in which we read any three books of our choosing and wrote one-page reports so lax, you could submit a fever dream scrawled in pencil and receive an A. Our teacher looked like she lived under a freeway overpass and had the hygiene regimen to match. I never saw her do anything other than read People magazine and clip her nails with industrial wire cutters.

It was abundantly clear that we weren’t being educated. We were being warehoused until adulthood. A teacher once muttered to a colleague in the hallway, “We’re training them to flip burgers.” And I believed him.

But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to flip burgers or go to college. I was going to sculpt my body into a Greek god, win a shelf of trophies, and retire to an island where protein shakes flowed like wine. And I had evidence of my imminent glory: I trained at The Weight Room in Hayward alongside John Matuszak, a defensive end built like a mythological beast and known for body-slamming offensive linemen and the occasional jukebox. We bonded over T-Bar rows and cheesy radio duets. Once, during a particularly syrupy ballad, Matuszak curled his lip in disgust, growled, “Bullshit,” and rep-pounded 400 pounds like he was hammering nails into sentimentality’s coffin.

Then there was Joe Corsi, local supplement tycoon and aged bodybuilder with a Dracula-meets-Jack-LaLanne aesthetic. Jet-black hair, dyed eyebrows, and a sleeveless jumpsuit that gave off the vibe of an aging lounge lizard hawking protein powder. He praised my “exceptional structure” and called me the next big thing. I waited for the sponsorship that never came.

Mother, skeptical of the steak delivery sponsorship I kept promising her, finally cornered me in the kitchen where she was butchering a raw chicken like it had committed a felony. “College,” she said. “It’s your only option.”

“What about Joe Corsi?”

“What about him? Unless he’s showing up with T-bones, you’ve got nothing.”

So I swallowed my Speedo-clad pride and applied to Cal State. Tuition was seventy-eight dollars a quarter. Cheaper than buying meat from Louie Corsi, Joe’s brother, who had offered me a pyramid scheme disguised as an entrepreneurial opportunity.

I entered college with all the enthusiasm of a man being marched to the gallows. I had no respect for my professors. They were walking, talking resumes with gourmet cookware fetishes and tales of their African safaris. My Ethics professor — the Dean of Philosophy — had recently left his wife for his secretary and cruised into the parking lot in a Porsche convertible, his toupee flapping like a bat out of hell. I despised him on sight.

Despite my straight A’s in high school, the university diagnosed me as an academic disgrace. I was unfit even for “Bonehead English” and was relegated to “Pre-Bonehead,” held in a boiler room next to maintenance. Janitors poked their heads in to laugh at us. And I deserved it.

I lacked academic skill, yes, but I also lacked common sense. One day, a neighbor’s Siberian Husky licked me on the mouth. Panicked about AIDS, I called a local radio station and asked a doctor if canine kisses could transmit the disease. The doctor assured me I was safe. My mother, emerging from her bedroom after hearing the broadcast, said, “Was that you on the radio? You thought dog spit gave you AIDS? Cool it, buster.”

It was a humbling moment. But not humbling enough to help me pick a major.

Criminal justice bored me. The legalese read like a Choose Your Own Adventure designed by Kafka. Sociology and psychology books were impenetrable clouds of jargon. Reading them felt like slashing through kudzu with a machete. History had the narrative flair of a warehouse inventory list. Oceanography was fine until I developed a Pavlovian twitch to the professor’s favorite words: “viscosity,” “liminal zone,” and “denitrification.”

Accounting nearly broke me. Ten minutes in, I walked out. The professor asked for my name. I said, “That won’t be necessary. You’ll never see me again.”

I was failing, flailing, and officially on academic probation by spring. The university handed me a letter saying, in essence, “Shape up or ship out.”

So I turned to my father.

He invited me over for steaks. On the patio, he asked how school was going. I confessed everything. He listened, chewed, and finally said, “You can’t be a garbage man.”

“Why not?”

“You’re too vain. Imagine telling people at a party you’re a sanitation engineer. You’ll crack under the weight of social disapproval.”

He was right. My ego wouldn’t allow me to collect trash. I needed a title with cachet. So I returned to campus, hat in hand, to pick a major. English it was. Why? Because the prose in other fields made me want to fling myself into traffic. Because I longed for writing that didn’t sound like it was composed by a committee of caffeinated consultants.

And because I couldn’t learn in a room full of thirty-five people. My mind jittered like a squirrel on espresso. I taught myself grammar from a handbook. Syntax became my sanctuary. Grammar gave me what life hadn’t: structure, coherence, and rules that actually worked.

Nietzsche once said we haven’t gotten rid of God because we still believe in grammar. He had a point. Grammar was my personal theology. It saved me.

My grades rose. My confidence grew. The tutoring center hired me. Then I was offered a teaching gig.

The university that once tried to boot me now wanted me at the helm.

I had become, with astonishing irony, the worst college professor ever.