If someone were to ask me to name the single most useless class I took in high school, I’d be torn between two: Physics and Educational Career Planning (known simply as ECP). The vote against Physics getting that title is that while the content was completely and utterly useless, the class itself was quite memorable. The teacher was pretty nerdy and awkward but didn’t seem to realize it (which was a great combination), so I created an impression of him that I used occasionally during our improv shows. I think I nailed it too, because I’d hear louder laughs in the audience from people who were in that class with me. He also once told the class that – due to the physics involved in a car crash – “that poodle in your backseat becomes a bloody missile going 60 miles per hour.” This led to countless drawings that MC Squared and I would pass back and forth depicting that exact scene. I can’t shake that one, and I still to this day have the phrase “bloody missile” float around in my head when I see people driving on the freeway with little yippy dogs on their laps. So how can I call that class useless?
ECP was also a complete joke of a class. I think there may have been something in there about how to keep a schedule and maybe something about balancing a checkbook, but I honestly don’t remember how I filled ten weeks of my life with that class. Here’s the thing though: I remember one and only one thing from that class and it now kinda freaks me out. We took some long ass questionnaire about our likes and dislikes and it was supposed to tell us what career matched our answers. I was 15 years old and had my share of hobbies but no real sense of who I’d become or what I’d want to do for a living. I got my sheet back with the top 10 or 20 matches, and at the top of the list was “Columnist.” That was something I’d never considered before as a possible career path but it totally made sense to me. If I had to guess, the modern version of that questionnaire would spit out “Blogger” for the same answers I gave. Granted, I am not a columnist or blogger for my profession, but when I look back at that “useless” class, it may have provided more insight as to who I’d become as a person than any other. Here’s what gets me: what could I have possibly been asked that would spit out the “columnist” profession? I remember saying that I didn’t mind being indoors, but that’s the only question I really recall. Was there something on there about “having varied opinions and a desire to share them with others in a regular format”? I have no idea, but it freaks me out a little to think that a questionnaire given to my 15 year old self could be a reasonable predictor of…anything. Is that retroactive peek into my future more or less useful than the image of a bloody poodle missile? It’s too close to call.