A Professor Made Me Drop Out of College

The Beginning of a Young Writer’s Journey

It was 1989 and I was a junior studying English at the University of Kansas. I had enrolled in a fiction writing class taught by Professor Alan Lichter.

On the first day of class, an older man with fly-away gray hair and a big, bushy mustache wearing shorts and a button up Hawaiian shirt walked into the classroom, looked around and said, “What are you all doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”

The students all looked at each other. I got out my schedule and rechecked it.

English 302 Fiction Writing Alan Lichter 10:00–10:50 MWF 236 Wescoe Hall

I glanced at the number on the door: 236. I was in the right place.

I looked at my watch: It was Monday morning, 10:01 am. It was the right time.

“What are you doing here?” the man repeated,” You are young. You shouldn’t be sitting in a desk. You should be outside, seeing the world. Travelling. That is where you will learn things. Not inside this room.”

He sat down at an empty desk at the front of the room.

Some of us students looked at each other. A few smiled and shook their heads. I didn’t know who Alan Lichter was. Certainly, the man now seated at the front of the room with us could be Alan Lichter.

He also could be a fellow student. He was the oldest person in the room but that was not unheard of. Plenty of older students attended KU, auditing classes or pursuing a dream that had been on hold.

We sat in silence for another minute.

Finally, the man stood up, “Well, if you are not going to leave, let’s at least do something.”

He grabbed a piece of chalk and scrawled on the board. It was messy and hard to read.

The king ran quickly down the corridor shouting angrily.

“If you haven’t decided to drop out of school and go traveling by Wednesday, please have a two to three page short story with the phrase written on the board embed in the story somewhere.” He put down the chalk and walked out of the room.

Again, the students in the room all looked at each other in shock. I opened my notebook, wrote the phrase down, gathered my belongings and left the room. I went back to my dorm and wrote my first story.

During the next class period, we each read to the class what he had written. We would give feedback on each other’s stories. Professor Lichter would critique our work quite publicly but not unkindly. He would share with us stories he had written and, of course, he would talk about places he had traveled to and people he had met.

The class was a wonderful, comfortable and safe place to be. I grew as a writer, but I also grew as a person. Professor Lichter taught us to be vulnerable and confident. He taught us to be humble and curious. He was strict in his expectations, but he was always kind.

Although he enthusiastically worked with us and made us better writers, he never let an opportunity go by to express his disgust with the fact that we were wasting our youth sitting in classrooms instead of exploring the world.

“Why are you here?” he would always ask.

Truthfully, I didn’t know the answer to the question. I had no idea what I was doing there, what I wanted to study or who I really was.

His class was very effective. I learned a great deal about writing, about not being afraid to try new things and about where true learning could take place.

I dropped out of school that summer and spent the next semester bartending in Ireland and backpacking around Europe. Every adult in my life was disappointed with my decision and scared for my future except one man: Alan Lichter. When I told him my plans he smiled and said he was proud of me.

It would take me four long years to make my way back to the University of Kansas. But when I did and found myself sitting in a desk in another classroom, I knew exactly why I was there, thanks to a man who encouraged me to drop out of school.