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14th of October 1991
THE COLLEGE STUDENT
The feeling of my pencil twirling in between my fingers does not help me focus at all. If anything, it's more distracting than watching the clock.
I stare at the board behind my professor in a daze thinking about what I could eat for lunch after this class. Maybe Chick-Fil-A? Or maybe I could skip lunch today and-
"Ms. Knowles!"
I snap out of my thoughts to see my African Studies professor standing before me with his hands on his hips.
Obviously, somebody has an attitude...
"Since you want to daydream in my class, you must already know the curriculum," He says and I lean back in my chair trying not to get distracted again, but he's just so boring. Watching his mouth move and hearing nothing but the same monotone voice in this cold classroom does not help me focus at all.
"Can you explain to me who Black Venus was?"
"Sarah Baartman," I answer knowing that we already talked about this and he chuckles as if I was being funny. It's as if he didn't expect me to know the answer or something like he doesn't expect much from me at all.
"Alright, who was she?" He wonders sarcastically as if he doesn't already know the answer himself. He definitely needs to go back to the drawing board when it comes to presenting his lessons.
I'm not dumb and I won't allow him to treat me like I am. I didn't crawl my ass out of public school to get here just for him to disrespect me and my intelligence.
"She was a South African woman who was hypersexualized and used as a spectacle to appease white people in Europe," I explain already knowing that I'm right because I've educated myself on my history before I even took this class.
I'm big on African history, my history, so taking this class is just a refresher at this point.
He stays quiet before nodding his head and moving along with the lesson. I bet he won't try that again because now, he just wasted his class time asking me questions that I already know. He's always bothering me, I'm starting to think he has a crush on me or something.
He dismisses us from class after making us suffer for another half hour and I run into my best friend, Michelle. We begin our walk to another building so we can get some lunch and go back to our dorms. "Girl, why'd my English professor recommend me to read Huckleberry Finn?" She complains making me chuckle as we both know how that racist book goes.
