… No, I didn’t agree with any of it.  It’s a business, not an institution for education.  Once I saw that, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  It was digging into my mind, burrowing deeper and deeper.  How are you supposed to focus when your mind’s unstable like that?

            So what did you do?

            Look at me.  What do you think I did?

            Gave up?

            Not quite.  I was nearly eighty thousand bucks in debt, and I needed to get a job.  There aren’t too many places that want to hire a college dropout.  It’s not like I can put on my resume, three years of formal education resulting in nothing. 

His face tightens out of disgust, and his tongue has a bitter tinge causing him to look agitated. 

            So what did you think about school?

            I loved it, in the beginning.  After my first year I thought I could do anything.  I figured I was God’s gift to the English language.  It didn’t take long to learn I wasn’t.

            How so?

            No matter how good you are there’s always someone better.  There’s no such thing as the best, kid.  You’ll learn that.  It was in my second year that I started to see it.  After two years I hadn’t become a better writer.  My skill hadn’t improved.  The only thing that improved was adapting my style to meet all the different requirements of different professors.  It was when I saw that that I started to be resentful.

            What did you do?

            I did what any kid would do and tried to suck it up.  I went back for my third year with hopes of change.  Nothing changed.  I started to hate my classes, my peers, my professors, everything.  I grew more and more bitter about my situation.  I needed to make a stand.  I couldn’t just be filed in with the rest of the kids ending up with the same piece of paper when I saw myself as something so much more.

He pauses and looks at his watch.  He looks back at me with a furrowed brow.  His neck tenses as he speaks of his ghost past.

            Is that when you quit?

            I didn’t so much quit as get banned from the school.

His eyes sparkle as he chuckles.

            What were you banned for?

            Well kid, back in those days we used to protest what wasn’t right.  It was an injustice that I was paying thousands and thousands of dollars to learn nothing but how certain people want me to write.  I did what any real man would have done, and made a stand.  With a megaphone and a group of young rebels I started a rebellion on campus.  It didn’t end well.  Cops, guns, teargas.  It was beautiful.

            Looking back don’t you wish you handled it differently?

            Kid, you just keep taking notes, and by the time you finally look up the world’s gonna be looking right back at you and you’re not going to know what to do.             

His knuckles whiten as he tightens the grip on his mop.  After ringing out the excess dirty water he goes back to his slow delicate dance across the halls whistling softly to himself.