The original entry

I am taking an art class, which an outside observer would think easy and fun.

I am friends with an art instructor from that school. Though she is fun, the class you took is not meant to be. It was meant to make you a better artist, even though you did not aspire to be this sort of artist, having given that up in middle school when you realized that you were a far better writer.

Still, the instructor's tack in approaching the class was wrong. No one loves a hardnosed, snobby Art 101 professor, though imagine how many entitled, obnoxious first years he dealt with daily? You can see why that would burn him out a little.

I think that you did not make a good impression on him, though, which is something that never makes sense to you. You know you are a quality student, but you may not look it, what with your fuzzy skull shirts.

You struggle and are baffled when people regard you as though you are less and incapable--you feel especially so when these are teachers who should know better. In this situation, it was easy to leave. You took photography instead, which was overall a more satisfying experience, but it is telling that you had no urge to soldier through a few more of the drawing classes to prove your worth.

He did once loudly berate a classmate for drawing an adept shoe because he happened to draw it from a photograph, so he may have just been a dick.

It was an exceedingly early class, though, so your life does improve once you drop it.

And he gives arbitrary assignments as we are walking out the door. Currently I have to draw a vista using only vertical lines.

That sounds like a good assignment. I like visualizing what that would be.

Oh yeah, and he claims that, until we pass his course, we don't have the right to use colors.

Again, seems reasonable to me, though I understand how you bristled under any assignment that you saw as "arbitrary," even if it now reads as foundational.

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Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.