Quitter’s High

By third year, he’d mastered the art of dropping a course, carefully noting the official dates before which he might still claim a certain percentage of his tuition, right down to the last possible day before his abysmal performance would be forever committed to his final transcript, frantically studying for a midterm in a subject he could not understand, from a page that made no sense, and feeling that surge of sweet relief as the tangle of highlighted text finally cleared to reveal the perfect solution, the realization that simply giving up and quitting would make it all go away.

Photo by Andy Rennie