At this point in my college career, I’ve more-or-less lost my fear of the first day of classes. I have my “first day” routine down to a science: get to campus early, claim the first available parking space (even if it’s nearly a half-mile away from the classroom), get a soda and a pack of beef jerky from the vending machine, then wait in front of the classroom door till the prof lets everyone in. 

That’s pretty much exactly what I did on my first day of in-person summer classes. Except for when I arrived on campus, I was relieved to see that it wasn’t a complete zoo. Only half of the main parking lot was full, and there weren’t many people out-and-about. As usual, I found a parking spot (which was much closer to the main campus building than I was expecting), hung my parking pass on the rear-view mirror, then made my way into the main building where my Philosophy course would be held for the duration of the summer. 

For awhile, I just sat by the classroom door sipping my soda, watching as more and more students joined me. Unlike in my fall and spring classes, the summer class students were, on average, much older. Most of my peers were in their late twenties and early thirties. Perhaps a couple of them were in their forties. Overall, because almost everyone was older than me, I felt confident that I wouldn’t be the professor’s pet anymore, which was (and is) fine by me! 

After the Spring 2023 semester, I was done with being the professor's pet!

A few minutes before class started, a short, scrawny guy that looked a lot like a stereotypical hipster approached us, unlocked the door to the classroom, and motioned for all of us to head into it. Because I was now a confident, eager-to-learn student who no longer feared professors, I chose a front row seat, and got ready to take some notes on Philosophy. 

While I’ve never taken a Philosophy course, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard. I was vaguely familiar with philosophers dating back to Epicurus and Socrates, but I never really delved too deeply into philosophy. Most of everything I knew (and know) about philosophy came from my own life experience, but I wasn’t about to disclose that to the entire class. Rather, I was just interested to see how the class would go; either it would be really boring or really interesting. Either I would know damn near everything, or I'd know close to nothing. Regardless, I was in it to win it!

When the clock struck 10:00 AM, our hipster professor got right to business, introducing himself as someone who just recently graduated with his PhD in Philosophy, and was now teaching Philosophy full time at CU Denver, MSU, and, of course, ACC. However, like most PhD’s I’ve run into so far, instead of addressing him as doctor or professor, he asked us to just call him Tom. 

“I’m your professor, but I’m not your authority figure, and I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about Philosophy.” Tom joked, “We’re all students of Philosophy in this class, including myself. Presumably, you guys are studying Philosophy for the very first time. First-time Philosophy students tend to have the most interesting and profound things to say about it… I’ve learned a lot from my Philosophy 101 students, and I'm excited to learn from all of you!"

Before we could get into any actual material, we spent the first hour of class covering the syllabus and getting a rough overview of the class. It was a fast-paced course because it was a summer course, but we’d get all A’s so long as we read the material and turned in our papers in time. None of our essays were particularly big or tedious ones. From what I saw in the course outline, we’d just be writing a lot of three or four page papers on what we thought about various philosophical arguments. Easy enough, right?

As soon as we finished going over the syllabus and class schedule, the prof immediately began to lecture us about Socrates and Plato. And, I’ll be honest, it was pretty boring at first. 

“Great.” I remember thinking to myself, “It’s gonna be a boring philosophy class, and not a fun one.”

Because I had that shitty mindset, I don’t remember a whole lot that happened during the second half of class. But, I do remember going home and reading several chunks of Plato’s Apology, then writing a small, one-page response essay for it (which I got a 100% on).