Monochrome

First Week Blues

When the bell rang, Ingrid made her way to the back of her watercolor class. In one hand she clutched her project from yesterday: a painting that had just been returned with a big fat "U" on the back. Unsatisfactory. It had been a while since she'd seen a U, but she knew what it meant. It meant F. Failure.

The teacher, Mr. D'Agostino, had his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and was washing brushes out in a sink. Ingrid approached him and held her painting out where he could see it. He gazed at the picture and then looked a question at Ingrid. He didn't pause in his work, and spots of colored water flicked onto Ingrid's white A-Four T-shirt.

"You gave me an F," she said.

"That's not an F, it's a U."

"Whatever. U means unsatisfactory. It's still an F."

"U doesn't mean unsatisfactory."

"It doesn't?"

"Nope." He stood the brushes up in a stand and pulled a towel from a rack to dry his hands.

Ingrid studied her picture, a football sailing through the uprights. She'd only been given brown and pink paint to work with, so she'd used the pink for the sky. A creative solution, if anyone had bothered to ask her.

"What does it mean, then?"

"It means 'un-constellated.'"

"Uh-huh." These A-Four teachers were all so full of crap. "And what does that mean?"

"It means that, aside from the fact that you didn't follow instructions, there also weren't enough clear points in your work for me to intuit your end goal."

"What are you talking about? Isn't this obviously a football?"

"There's nothing obvious about it. And I'm not just talking about the literal objects in your work. I'm talking about things like style and mood and intensity. When I consider all the elements of your work as emotional points, do I get a clear sense of what you were trying to impress upon me as the viewer? If I can't, then I can't even begin to judge the effectiveness of the individual elements. And, for me, the points of your work never constellated into something I could grade. It's just a lot of dead, disjointed elements."

Somewhere in this speech, Ingrid intuited that U was still not a good grade. She said, "Let me ask an easier question. If all my projects get a U, am I going to pass this class?"

"No."

"So it is an F."

"If you want to look at it that way." He hung the towel back on the rack and headed toward the front of the class. The rest of her classmates had all cleared out, and new kids were starting to make their way in. Ingrid followed him.

"Is there any chance you could give me a D this time?"

"That would be a C, and since your work isn't constellated, a C would be a lie."

"Okay, but can't you cut me a break? It's two days into the school year and I've never done this before."

"That doesn't make me feel sorry for you, it only makes me wonder why you signed up for my class."

"I didn't. Ms. Parker picked it." Ingrid could only assume that Parker, angry at having no evidence on which to pin the office break-in on Ingrid, had decided to take out her resentment by giving Ingrid the worst schedule on earth.

"It's still your responsibility to perform."

"But, Mr. D'Agostino—"

"I told you before to call me Vince."