"Who wants to go first?" The English instructor says to the class.
The assignment was straight forward enough, give a ten to twelve minute presentation on one of the articles in the course's textbook.
I raise my hand. I had all weekend to flip through the handbook and pick a work to publicly digest, and I forgot about it completely. I'm diving into the pages as he speaks.
"Okay, [Jae], what are you going to do it on?"
I had five seconds to find something--and there it is--dutifully waiting for me--so obvious. "The Suicide Note," I answer.
The next day, I presented. I gave my lecture the title, "The Easy Way Out," being sardonic, an attitude that at least the vocal classmates missed--if not the entire class (although I do believe the instructor caught the point--he doesn't overlook much).
In fact, at least some of the students not only missed the point of my presentation, but also the gist of the poem itself, which was a naked composition of the disordered thinking of someone who is suicidal.
"So," I ask the class at the end of the short lecture, "Do you believe that suicide is 'the easy way out'?"
The answer is plain to anyone who has ever been suicidal, or lost a family member or friend to suicide.
"Yes," one girl answers. "People just don't want to deal with their problems."
I don't respond. Nowhere in the assignment are there points for arguing against one's classmates. Nothing I said or wrote did anything to generate sympathy or empathy for the suffering girl in the poem--a tragedy that is very real to me.
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