"Write about a brief but scary encounter with one of your old professors."

I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown, Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Creative Writing. My final semester before Graduation was probably the first time in four years that I'd made a concerted effort NOT to cut class, party at every given opportunity, and otherwise disregard the higher education that had been afforded to me.

The academic side of that last semester as a Senior was considered cake, in that I had no more required classes left to complete my major course of study; no more math (yes), no more French (I could not speak or read it to save my life), or any of the social sciences. It was all writing, writing, writing, and it took zero effort on my part, aside from the effort that it took to get out of bed every morning and actually go to class. That was far tougher to me than writing a 10-page paper or a collection of poems, and often left my business and chemistry major roommates shaking their heads. They never understood me, anyway.

One of these remaining classes in the spring of 1992 was not a writing class, though I figured it might be interesting; it was an elective survey course called History of Modern Art. I had enjoyed art for as long as I could remember, and had studied various contemporary periods on my own since high school. During my first day of class, I quickly realized that this was not a course taken by many Humanities students, but rather it fell into the category of one of those required classes that all the other majors needed to get out of the way. Hence the proliferation of Rugby players, business and engineering students in the room.

I sat in my usual, least surreptitious spot, the left rear corner, and listened intently to the lectures, poring over the coffee-table volume that was our textbook, History of Modern Art by H.H. Arnason. While I had long been fascinated by various eras including Impressionism and Surrealism, I really had no idea of their differences, nor where exactly the demarcation in history lay to divide Classical and "Modern" art. So I soaked up the knowledge as if I were the sponge I was during my much-younger years, marveling during a slide presentation at what was considered to be the "first" work of modern art, the 1834 lithograph by Honore Daumier, "Rue Transnonain."

I thrilled at discovering works that went beyond Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream," Matisse's "Waterlilies" and Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." I fell in love with other pieces by artists I'd never experienced before, like Franz Marc's "The Large Blue Horse," Paul Klee's "Around the Fish," Matisse's "The Red Studio" and "The Piano Lesson,"  Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," Georges Rouault's "The Old King," Rene Magritte's "The Menaced Assassin," Marc Chagall's "Birthday," Giorgio de Chirico's "Mystery and Melancholy of a Street," Edward Hopper's "New York Movie," "Early Sunday Morning"... I could go on with countless examples, but one need look no further than the fact that I still remember these artists and their works nearly 30 years later to understand how this class impacted me and my love of the visual arts.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed time spent in History of Modern Art, even though it was obvious that there was very little interest generated on the part of my classmates. I could often sense the suffocating atmosphere of utter boredom that hung heavy in the classroom. Their loss, I thought.

The theme of our final paper was simplistic, to say the least; take two pieces by two different artists from the same period, and in your own words compare and contrast their styles. Easily done. I chose Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Edvard Munch's "The Dance of Life." In my one-line bibliography, I cited our textbook, as it contained glossy colorplate pages of the works and brief descriptions of each. The only snag I hit during the process was that my word processor had seemingly died (ah, living in an age without personal computers or laptops... sigh), and I had to enlist the help of a guy whom I really didn't want to be around-- a kid named Brian with whom I'd had a complicated series of drunken encounters for the past three semesters-- but desperate times called for any port in a storm, to mix a couple of metaphors. He took my paper and re-typed it for me, though he chose to misspell "Van Gogh" as "Van Gough" for reasons I never could quite ascertain. I simply red-lined them and hand-wrote the correct spelling before turning in the paper.

A week later, at the conclusion of our class, Professor Tyson announced that he was handing back our papers, and that there was a handful of us to whom he needed to speak before leaving. I quickly noticed that none of the papers being passed back belonged to me. I thought, Maybe he felt that my paper was particularly good, and wanted to congratulate me? I had often been praised for my writing, though that was generally during my writing and literature classes.

I hung around while he quickly spoke to a couple of students who had also not received their papers back, and then I faced him. He held my paper in his hands, and he told me that I had forgotten to cite the source of my paper. I looked back at him dumbstruck, thinking, Oh, shit, did I forget to include the bibliography page, short as it was? Did Brian forget to type it? I'll kill him...

But, no, there it was, the last page of the stapled bunch, so I was confused. Professor Tyson's attempt at un-confusing me failed massively. "You need to cite the sources for this paper."

"But... I did." I gestured to the bibliography page.

"This final paper counts heavily toward your final grade. What sources did you use to write it?" he continued.

I was completely at a loss for words, not fully grasping the accusation that was about to come. My mind raced as I tried to form words, but no words emerged. I had used my own brain, in addition to the reference book, to write the paper, end of story. Since the power of speech seemed to have left me in the lurch, I pointed to my temple, as a mimed attempt at telling him that I had used my own power of deductive reasoning to draw the comparisons in my paper, punctuated by spitting out the word "Here." Unfortunately, I think he perceived my explanation as no more than an aloof, smart-assed response, which ironically could not have been further from the truth.

"No," he responded, with what could only be described as a shit-eating grin on his face. His eyes were narrowed, and the grin was a smarmy, smug, self-satisfied smirk. Before this moment, I had regarded him as an intelligent man and a gifted lecturer as he had held my interest for the past several weeks, which was more than I could say for the jock neanderthals that made up the majority of the rest of the class. He himself was a fine artist and an effective communicator, had taught and lectured at several institutions, and his art had been featured in several collections and exhibitions. Now, I just saw a mean-spirited asshole, his nostrils slightly flaring, his eyes a deeper black than I'd ever noticed before. "No, you need to cite all of the sources that you used to write this paper. If you don't, not only will you receive a failing grade, but I can have you brought before the Board on charges of plagiarism."

I think at that point my jaw dropped. The world seemed to stop with my heart trapped in my throat, determined to choke me. I still held the paper limply between two fingers, unsure of what else to do but hand it back to him before wandering out into the hallway. In that moment, I didn't possess the mental tools to comprehend what had just happened, or how to deal with the ramifications of the words that had just punched me in the face.

The next few moments could only be described as what it would feel like to slog through a marsh of quicksand, as the rest of the world continued past me in a grey wave of continuous slow-motion. I could perceive movement on both sides of me, as students were filing out into the hallway from other classes that had just ended, and I could hear their chatter and footsteps, the clicking of doorknobs being twisted and doors creaking open, but the sounds were muffled as though I were wading underwater through a thick, viscous soup.

At the end of the hallway, I stopped in front of the Humanities faculty office belonging to two of my Professors, Dr. Dave Ward and Dr. Richard Strojan, the latter of whom was now my academic advisor. I had never spent any quality outside-of-class time with either of them, but now I found myself standing in front of the door and windows into their joint office, my cheeks flushing, still not entirely certain of the impending doom with which I'd just been threatened.

Both of them happened to be in the room, and welcomed me warmly. "Heather!" called Dr. Strojan, "How are you? What can I do for you?" He was such a little man, probably no more than 5'3", with a large nose and two blue-grey eyes buried under a sea of wrinkles behind his wire frame glasses. He had a very bad haircut (it had to be a rusty bowl of a wig), his ears poking out from underneath. But he was a fascinating and warm-hearted character who had led several writing classes I had taken over the past four years. Dr. Ward loomed in the background behind his desk. He was a lover of James Joyce, right down to the mustache and round glasses that he himself wore (in homage?). I (and many others) had often wondered what the real living arrangement was between him, his wife and Dr. Strojan, but those thoughts were furthest from my brain at the moment.

I stared past Dr. Strojan's shoulder, straight to the wall, for what was probably only a few seconds, but which felt like eons. As I attempted to collect my thoughts and translate them into sensible English, he and his tan wool crew-neck sweater faded in my peripheral vision to a mere mass of shadows. I felt dizzy.

"How do you prove to someone that you haven't plagiarized?" was all that I could manage.

The rest of the conversation remains a blur to me now, much as it was then, but what rings clear to this day is the fact that Dr. Strojan was quite agitated by my story, a mood I had never seen him express before in all my years at school. "Don't you worry, Heather," he assured me, his voice rising in both pitch and volume. "Dave Ward and I, we'll get the Cliftons" (Dr. Gladys and Dr. Charles Clifton were both instructors in the Humanities Department that I'd had for classes over the years as well), "we'll get the entire Humanities Department to stand before the board and defend you. Don't you worry about this."

A week later, I was called to the front of the room as History of Modern Art concluded for the day. Professor Tyson had my once-questionable paper in his hands, but he still wore that smug, shit-eating grin on his face. I took the paper from him and saw the big red "A" written at the top of the page. I looked back at him in bewilderment. "You sit in the back of the classroom... you don't say a word the entire semester, you don't contribute..." he rambled, which was his way of basically stating that he didn't believe I had the intellectual capacity to write a paper that carried any weight to indicate actual thought or reason. My blood was boiling.

"You remember those three-by-five index cards you passed out during our first day of class?" I asked him. "The ones you had us fill out with our names, our MAJORS, our interests?" He didn't respond. "Well, if you had actually taken the time to read mine, you would have noted that not only am I a CREATIVE WRITING major, but that I've had an avid interest in art since childhood. You would have also noticed that I listed several eras that actively interested me, from Pop Art to the New Wave East Village scene in New York during the late 70's and early 80's-- stuff that I read about on my own," I spat. I turned on my heel,  once-offending paper still clutched in my hand, and exited his classroom for the last time.

I would have given my two front teeth to have been a witness to the conversation that must have taken place between him and Dr. Strojan and whoever else made up a cobbled assembly of Humanities professors to take up the cause and shut him down before he could make a move to fail me, or bring false criminal charges to my record.

As a result of the "A" grade, I wound up making Dean's List that semester; ironically, the first-- and only-- time during my four years of college.

Better late than never, I guess.