Poetry class.

I've always enjoyed reading and writing, but I've never taken any classes geared towards developing me as a writer. All throughout high school, it was either grammar classes or English classes run by crazy feminists who endlessly quoted Helen Keller and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

When I signed up for "Creative Writing", I was hoping that, since it's a college, the classes would be less full of silly dolts that detracted from my intellectual development(recurring theme in high school) as a writer, and instead helped me develop creative ways to torture inconceivably obnoxious children.

Well, my hopes were partially enforced, as there were no annoying chatterbugs boring into my brain. I was confronted by a whole new breed of annoying. These people, when they chose to sign up for a poetry class, somehow didn't realize that they would have to write poetry (maybe they understood this part), and have it critiqued by the professor in the class. Admittedly, I wasn't aware of this, either. However, almost every person in the class become irreversibly offended when the professor offered criticism. It was as though their belief was that they were beyond any sort of help, that they transferred onto paper the literary equivalent of God Himself.

One of the most prominent examples, and most repetitive, was that of trying to explain to everyone what they meant by particular words. A student, when faced with another's interpretation of their poem, actually said, "No, what I meant by 'word' was 'other word', you are wrong."

What they failed to realize what that, had that piece of writing been published, or had they not been there, the other student's interpretation of their writing would have remained. Basically, if someone is extracting from your poem something other than you intended, you did not do a good job of writing it. Of course, the professor, being more intelligent that everyone in the room, attempted to offer some constructive criticism, but was met with closed-minded hostility.

It reminds me of American Idol. At the beginning of the show, you always have the horrible vocalists who honestly think they can sing, and sing well, only to appear heartbroken when faced with Simon's honest and almost always correct opinion. They then proceed to villify him. That's natural, I guess. Kill the messenger.

The exact same thing happened in this creative writing course. When offered with constructive criticism(as it always was), they completely shut down and probably didn't learn anything.

Please, people, I have one request. If someone sucks at something, do not lie and tell them they are good at it! You don't have to come out and say "Man, you suck", but you also don't have to stroke their ego like Paris Hilton strokes her ego.

Tell them how they can improve.