Dear Syllabus:
It's been three months and I still can't get you off my mind. I think about you every day. Oh Syllabus, I miss you so much!
Why you? Why now? It didn't have to be this way, Syllabus.
We could have lived a long and happy life together, but you didn't want it. You wanted to disappear off the face of the Earth and leave me all alone.
Syllabus, we used to have such good times together.
I used to walk into Languages and Literatures (Ladies Love, as we used to affectionately refer to it with one another) on the first day of the semester, pick up a copy of you, and learn all about the class you represented.
I would decide, based on the information you provided me, whether I needed to drop or add classes, whether a workload was too demanding, whether a professor was too crazy.
Syllabus, I used to sit with you for hours and note my planner with all your important days. I marked you up like nobody's business.
Those were the days, Syllabus.
We had a good thing, you and I.
If only I'd known that you were in trouble, maybe I could have done something. Started a protest. Staged a sit-in. But you didn't tell me.
Now it's too late.
I just walked into my classes this semester, expecting you to be there like you always were, like I thought you always would be.
But you weren't there. You abandoned me, Syllabus.
Instead, professors were directing me to your bastardized electronic cousin on Blackboard. Imagine my surprise!
Wasn't I good to you, Syllabus?
Didn't I love you? Didn't I hole-punch you and put you in the front of my binder? Didn't I highlight your key lines in orange and star particularly exciting texts?
Didn't I pay my tuition dollars faithfully every semester? Wasn't that enough money for you to be printed out for me? It's not like I cared if you came double-sided. I didn't even mind if you weren't stapled. I just wanted you handed to me.
I wanted to read you while I still had time to get out of a class while the getting was good.
Now I've got to find time among class, work and the ridiculously long lines at the bookstore during the first week of the semester to go online and download your weaker relative, print him out on my own paper with my own overpriced ink.
Say it ain't so, Syllabus.
Maybe you're just on vacation. Maybe you're hanging out in Hawaii with the other half of that golf pencil they gave me to evaluate my professor.
If it's a matter of money, I'm happy to give back the flag and Constitution that have been posted in every room.
It's you that I want, Syllabus. You and only you.
Don't leave me here staring at the computer screen, losing my vision one class at a time.
I need you in my life, Syllabus.
And don't I deserve you? I treated you right, and this is what I get in return. You leave me hanging without so much as a word of goodbye.
It's a good thing I'm graduating, Syllabus, because I don't think I could handle another semester of your rejection.
It hurts too much, Syllabus! How I cry at night, thinking of the way we used to be together.
Come back, Syllabus. Tell your professor you want to be back in my life. Tell him how much we mean to each other.
Come home to Mama.
Yours eternally,
Hanna
Hanna Ricketson sends hugs and kisses to all the missing syllabuses. Send sightings to: hanna.ricketson@asu.edu.
