Last year during my first semester I was taking a required Honors Creative Writing course. The "professor" was just a graduate English student, and so she wasn't very old--somewhere in her mid twenties. We read a lot of poetry throughout the course, and when we were in class she would call on people to read and then we would all analyze the poem as a group.
One day she asked me to read a poem--I don't even remember what it was or anything about it for that matter. Anyways, I was reading and got to the last line of the poem. The author had decided to end his poem with the "F" word.
I generally do not use profanity--especially the F word. I suppose they are all bad, but there are definitely varying degrees of profanity. So as I got to the last line, I just didn't read it--it isn't a word I can ever remember saying in my life, so why would I say it now just because I was in a class? The teacher just sat there for a minute, then said to me, "You can say it in this class. It's fine."
I said, "I know, but I don't want to." I think she, and a lot of the class, probably thought I was such a weirdo. After all, I hear words like that about every other second walking around campus or on the floor of my dorm. However, after being reminded about this incident, I am glad to know that by not saying something I didn't believe in saying, it made an impression on at least one person.
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