The Hardest Class To Pass In College

Written by Pete Griffith

Minneapolis College of Art & Design

Pete Griffith is the Founder and President of Mentum, LLC and the host and narrator of this Once In College podcast. As a former creative director for over 20 years at the world’s largest ad agencies, Pete’s work for numerous Fortune 100 companies gained some impressive creative recognition. An Emmy, a Cannes Lion, some Clios, gold at NY Film Festivals, those sorts of recognition. But when work meant spending more time away from his family than with them, Pete started his own agency and never looked back. He believes his work not only has to make you feel something, it must make you do something. More…

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Hosted and produced by Peter Griffith & Rob Wallace; contributing engineer Micheal Henery.

In this episode, we hear of a funny but true story from 1988 that reminds us – the moment we think we are close to having it all solved, there’s always that one person who can knock it all back down. A reality that was learned the hard way, by an eager student at a tiny college of art and design in Minneapolis, taking a brutal class that was required to graduate, called Typography 101.

Published the day after the U.S. Inauguration, January 21, 2025

[ Late 1980s music ]

HOST: Today on campus, it’s 1988. The first inkjet printers are out to help us work more efficiently. The first mobile phones are released, bringing us closer than ever. And the first permanent international internet connection – called the Worldwide Web – allow information to be shared around the globe.

Yes, this was the year of so many life-changing advancements. But then, in November, the rug is pulled from beneath it all and one man unleashes the first major malware code, the Morris Worm. It kills thousands of computers around the world, causing as much as 10 million dollars in damages.

And so, once again, we are painfully reminded that the moment we think we are close to having it all solved, there’s always that one person who can knock it all back down. A hard reality that was learned by an eager student at a tiny college of art and design in Minneapolis, taking a brutal class called Typography 101.

[ Podcast theme music ]

This is Once, In College. I’m Pete Griffith. I bear witness to that brutal course as I was the 18-year-old idiot who trudged through it. I’ve been cajoling others so much to share their stories, I thought it was high time to put my money where my mouth is. So this is one of my college experiences. If I had the time, I’d try and build it up more, but thankfully, class is about to begin.

[ Bells from campus tower ]

[ SFX: Cold winds and snow ] 

NARRATOR:  I started my second sophomore semester in a basement apartment during a frigid winter in Minneapolis. The long days held little sunshine but what depressed me the most at that time was having to take a course titled Type 101.

Mark was the first person to cast a dreary light on the class. He was one of my first friends at campus and remains a lifelong mensch of mine to this day. Today he sits at his California home in his warm, sunny studio creating many of the amazing effects you see in Hollywood franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars and Transformers. Back then, he noodled around on his synthesizer and sported a mean mullet. His first words to me when I showed up on campus wearing a jeans outfit from head to toe was to sarcastically say, ‘Nice Canadian Tuxedo’. I trusted him ever since. So when I told him I was taking Type 101, and he simply lowered his head to let out a long, measured, agonizing breath of air, I knew I was in for a heap of pain.

Type 101 is basically eight weeks of discussions revolving around how to position letters next to each other. Debating the intricacies of how much space you should put above and below sentences. The creative thrill of using capitals, or not, for dramatic effect. I was a design student and loved visual puzzles, but at the time, Type 101 seemed to be tedious enough to be one of Dante’s concentric circles of hell. One of the lower levels.

The night before the first class, anxiety kept me awake. Five beers put me to sleep. Two feet of Minnesota snow then quietly dumped from the stars and a rather stealth snowplow snuck by, packing it all tight up against the window of my northern facing bedroom. Not a ray of morning sun snuck in and I slept in until noon, missing the first class all together. Did I sleep in because of the snow? As they say in Minnesota, ‘you betcha’. Did I sleep in because I just didn’t want to go to Type 101? Again, also you betcha.

Needless to say, I overcompensated for all this by walking into the first class, okay, second class, acting overly confident. Cocky, to be honest. Problem was, the professor carried herself with even more of that same swagger and our first battle was afoot.

Surprisingly, I was inspired with her first assignment. She gave us a short, ten-word quote and it was epic in how it conjured up so many images in my head. We were to enhance or bring added meaning to the quote by only changing the design of the letters. We couldn’t add pictures or change any of the words. We were just to modify the size, shape or design of the individual letters. I ran back to my dorm room inspired to create something incredible.

In my head, the quote sounded like the author was an angel. So for some reason, I found it interesting if you literally flipped all that and made it a line spoken by the devil. So I cut out the quotation marks at each end of the line with an X-acto knife, tripled their size on a copy machine, and pasted them back on either end of the quote. Only upside down. In this manner, their dangling legs now pointed up, one going left, one going right, resembling the pointy horns of a devil surrounding the words in between.  And for added measure, I colored them a deep, bright red. I was so full of myself and my solution, that I didn’t just think of laughing like a maniacal villain, I actually did. Out loud. My roommate joined in just for kicks.

The next class, I tacked my work up on the wall with everyone else for the professor’s critique. Her reaction of what I had done was a little more measured than others. And by that, I mean she literally lowered her head, let out that same measured breath of air like Mark had, and skipped by it to the next student’s work hanging on the wall. She wouldn’t return to it until she had finished with all the others.

Before the days of being able to instantly find anything you wanted to online, you actually had to go to a bookstore or library to research things. Things like quotes. If I had, I would have known that the quote was intended to be heavenly. In fact, the author likens the meaning to the humanity of God. Literally. The Professor did a thorough job of pointing that fact out as she critiqued my work. While she rubbed her necklace with a tiny golden cross with a tiny golden Jesus nailed to it between her thumb and middle finger.

I don’t remember how I responded, but I remember defending my work. Passionately. Like a heretic standing up to God herself. In doing so, I made a solid impression, and my grade went from a strong D- to a rock solid F.

I vowed on the next assignment, and re-vowed the two after that, not to give up and stick to my artistic guns. I doubled down on our disagreements and stood up for what I felt was right. I fell on my sword as they say. Each time even harder than the last. At the end, I was leaping off the corner post of a wrestling ring and doing a full Monty bellyflop onto it. For my heroic efforts, I was given a C- for the first assignment and flat out failed the next two.

This pattern painfully continued over the next six weeks. I turned in what I thought was right from my perspective. She judged the work from her perspective, and well, as was her right as the professor, she always won. I spent the rest of the course meandering through three of the four stages of rejection in slow mo. First denial, then anger, then an excruciatingly long period of bargaining. In the end, I flunked the class.

If it isn’t a well-known truth already, let me put it out there. Law school, Med school… these are filled with hard classes. Classes that extremely smart people fail. Nobody I know has ever failed an art class. Except me. The bruise to my ego was painful. Afterwards, going to parties with everyone who had taken the class with me was excruciating. I never told Mark and I formulated how I would keep this from my parents. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Type 101 was a required course for my major. I had to take the same exact class over again if I was to graduate. Same exact curriculum. Same exact assignments. With the exact same teacher. It was to learn how to swallow my pride. Crow was on the dinner table and I was to eat a lot of it. The last stage of processing rejection kicked in. I had to accept it and move on.

Since I knew what she liked, there seemed to be only two ways to go back into battle and face my foe. I was to either give the Professor exactly what she wanted. Or, be true to myself, relive the same painful experience and probably fail the course only to have to retake it again.

The morning I walked into the first class of Type 101 for the second time, (technically third time), I honestly did not know what I was going to do. And then a miracle. For some reason, my arch enemy was not there. Instead, a skinny man in his late 30s was sitting at the professor’s desk. He introduced himself as the new Professor and laid out the class curriculum. It was the exact same course and same exact assignments, to the letter. In fact, the first assignment that was due was interpreting the exact same quote by only modifying the design of the letters or words.

I skipped home. Literally looking like a fool on the campus quad. And when I got home to the safety of my basement dorm room, I did something at that moment that I think you can only do in college when you are still young and often dumb and have no perspective in the consequences of risking everything. I decided the very next class I would turn in the exact same answer that I had turned in the first time. I had kept it for some reason, Devil horns and all.

The day came to put our assignments up on the wall. Everyone from the previous class had easily passed so nobody knew me or my work. Still, my hands trembling as I tacked up my previously displayed assignment. I think this time, I took a long, measured breath.

When the new professor came around to my work, he paused for a moment like the previous Professor had done. Only his pause was brief. He simply chuckled and then uttered one word, ‘Brilliant’, then moved on down the line.

For the next seven weeks, I turned in the exact same assignments that I had turned in the first seven weeks of taking the course. I had kept them all. This time however, the final outcome was different. I passed. With a solid B. 

Type 101 was the hardest class I ever took. Not because of the assignments or curriculum. Not because I failed it and had to take it over again. But because in taking it, I had to learn the hard way, the correct answer is not always determined by what the answer actually is, but more often by who the person is judging it.

We like to judge. It’s human nature. We even prefer human judgment more than undisputable scientific data.

In sports, figure skating and gymnastics by far are the most watched and closely followed events at the Olympics. And what do they share in common? Winners are not determined by clocks and tape measures, but by judges. And even then, the judging criteria is fickle. Whatever tuck, turn, leap or spin may be in vogue or rewarded the most one year, often goes out of fashion the next.

If there was only one true, indisputable answer in life, we would only need to buy one color or style of shirt for the rest of our lives. We would only need to read one account of history and never have to read any other version of it. We would only listen to a single song and never hear the notes of another.

Judging has even crept into mathematics. Old school math taught us two plus two equals four. The only undisputable answer is four and the entire credit for that answer was based on that singular answer. But the new math is all about showing your work. Your grade is no longer based on getting the answer, but by the way in which you arrived at it.

The hardest thing to do is try and please everyone. There are 8.2 billion judges in the world. Any answer you come up with will either please or piss people a bunch of people off. The best judge that you should use as your barometer is the one you can live with. Yourself.

And for many, that is one of the hardest lessons to learn.

[ Late 1980s music ]

HOST:  Today’s episode was produced by Rob Wallace and myself, with Michael Henery at the helm of our final mix.

If something here today reminded you of a time in college, we’d love to hear about it. Failed a class yourself? Feel free to bitch about it. Been unfairly judged in college. Leave us a comment or two, or visit us at onceincollege.com. We are looking for unique or unusual stories that happened on or off campus. Some of the most memorable things you learn in college aren’t found in books or lectures. Which reminds us…

I want to thank Rob Wallace again for being objective in helping me cobble this episode together. I’m sure more than once he had to take a long, measured breath of his own before providing me with his insightful reactions. Of the 8.2 billion judges in the world, I’ll put him up there in my top .0001 percent.

He made us remember that everything in life is subjective. So no matter who tries to put you down, the only person you need to please is yourself.

You know the gig from here. Give us a like if you liked any of this. Or share this episode with someone who you went to school with. And if you want to hear more of stories like this the moment they come out, please subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us more than you’d ever think. More than our GPAs ever did.

Until then, I’m Pete Griffith, back next week with more stories like this, all from a time Once, In College.

[ Podcast theme music ]