What the Fuck, Chuck?

So, I decided to take a non-credit creative writing class this fall at a local technical college. I wasn’t expecting much when I signed up, was just hoping for a few good prompts to get me writing regularly again. I was pleasantly surprised to find a group of intelligent people in the class and an awesome professor with a respectable syllabus. We even had homework! (The nerd in me was definitively in heaven).

There is only one problem with the respectful awesome class—and that problem is Chuck. Chuck has an MFA in writing, which at first made me excited to have a classmate that had experience writing in the professional realm. That was, of course, until I found out that he was the gloating type. Not only did he try to take over the class (interrupting the professor and preaching about how she should teach) but he also managed to wave his own book around so that we’d all notice he had one.

The first class period we had a writing prompt where we had to write a list-type thing. Most of us shared ours—I’ll probably post mine on here as an example when I get home. He, of course, shared his. I hate to be judgmental, but it’s all too easy to judge a guy who is obviously judging everyone else. I said a nice comment about what he read because he complimented what I wrote—but his writing isn’t all that good.

Last night was the second class, and true to form Chuck was his own pretentious self. Our assignment was to read a paragraph or two from our favorite author and talk about why we liked them. It was great at first. People sharing from authors I’d never heard of but definitely wanted to read. It was great, of course, until Chuck decided he needed to interject. He started name dropping authors and analyzing what each person said. If he didn’t ‘approve’ of people’s choices he would look obviously annoyed. His comments made us almost not finish in time before the class ended. People in the class were obviously just as annoyed as me. I wish the teacher had said something. The woman across from me was covering her mouth to keep from laughing.

When it was Chuck’s turn to share, his holier than thou attitude continued. He decided to share a poem. He HANDED OUT copies of the poem effectively killing a few trees for his dumb ass superiority complex. The poem wasn’t very good. On top of that he then analyzed the poem like we would in one of my 400 level writing classes in college if it was an assignment. Only, he was the only one analyzing. He talked for over ten minutes about this poem and why it was so great, dropping literary definitions like they were candy in a parade and we the eager children waiting on the sides of the road. (Only we weren’t children and were far from eager to listen to his lecture).

Next week we are critiquing writing people handed out at the end of class. We only have about 5minutes per person to critique. I hope to god Chuck doesn’t get called on. If he does and tries to take up all of my critique time I’m going to interrupt him and tell him I want a few other opinions before my time runs out.