I'll Bring Honor to Us All

NAMELESS UTAH COLLEGE: Congratulations, you're in the Honors program. That makes you special!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Yay!

NAMELESS UTAH COLLEGE: It also means that you have special problems!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Less yay.

NAMELESS UTAH COLLEGE: One of the problems of Honors students is that they don't ask for help, even when they need it. That's something you're going to have to learn to overcome!

My life has shown this to be the understatement of the century.

I had math with Best Friend Boy every year of high school. That first semester was pretty rough.

MATH TEACHER: So, class, do you understand all the things I just told you?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Not entirely, but I will frantically work all the problems backwards from the answers in the back of the textbooks until I have reverse-engineered the process by which the answer was deduced. I would rather do this than ever, ever, ever ask for help. Ever.

BEST FRIEND BOY: (raises hand) I don't understand. Could you show me again?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: What?! What is this weakness? You shame us all!

MATH TEACHER: (shows the class again)

BEST FRIEND BOY: So if X and Y and the coagulant of Z blah blah blah high school math then answer?

MATH TEACHER: Yes, and also Boolean algebra blah blah blah most correct answer.

BEST FRIEND BOY: Okay. I get it now.

Pretty sure Best Friend Boy never had to reverse-engineer math processes.

You'd think I'd learn. You'd think I would have gotten to the point where I would realize that sometimes people need help, and that it's okay to need help, and in fact it's often better than not needing help in the first place.

Well, the truth of the matter is that I did learn. And then I forgot. And then I relearned. And reforgot.

Someday maybe I'll learn it for keeps. I definitely, however, am not learning it for keeps in the Nameless Utah College Honors program.

Putting a bunch of people who won't ask for help together and expecting them to learn how to ask for help is like putting a bunch of lepers together and expecting them to stop having leprosy.

HONORS PROFESSOR: Do you understand the subject matter, class?

HONORS STUDENTS: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Oh, completely.

PROFESSOR: (leaves)

HONORS STUDENT: I have a knife in my backpack if anybody would like to kill themselves instead of failing the test.