There are certain decisions in college that feel questionable in the moment…
and then become legendary later.
This was one of those.
Our Gone with the Wind assignment came from an art history professor who also happened to run the entire Fine Arts Department.
Which meant two things…
he took it very seriously…
and none of us did.
The deal was simple.
Watch the movie.
Write a review.
Then take two tests.
One on the film itself…
and one on 500 flashcards of artwork where only 100 would show up…
which somehow made it feel like academic roulette.
The flashcards?
Honestly… kind of fun.
The movie?
Four hours long.
Emotionally aggressive.
We assumed it would be a slow, painful march toward a grade.
Luckily… there were five of us.
And we had already spent three years finding ways to make almost anything entertaining…
We basically lived in the communication arts wing.
Right in the middle of everything.
If you walked between the library, Thomas Hall, Otto Olsen, or Student Affairs…
you walked past us.
Which meant we knew everyone.
Or at least… it felt like we did.
From my angle, it was even funnier.
I had started as an aviation computer science major…
ended up in marketing and graphic design…
and played basketball.
So my circles overlapped in a way that made zero sense on paper…
but perfect sense in that hallway.
We weren’t just watching a movie.
We were preparing.
Snacks.
Drinks.
And yes…
we were absolutely high.
Not chaos.
Not reckless.
Just enough to turn the volume up on everything.
And that’s when the movie stopped being a movie.
And turned into an experience.
Scarlett wasn’t a character…
she was a full-blown commitment to bad decisions.
Every scene felt like she was improvising consequences in real time.
“I’ll think about it tomorrow” hit different when you realize…
tomorrow has been a problem for four straight hours.
And Rhett…
he wasn’t even in the same movie.
Everyone else was trapped in a dramatic historical epic…
Rhett was casually hosting a sarcastic commentary track.
At one point someone said…
“This guy knows how this ends and just doesn’t care.”
We lost it.
And then there was the length.
At some point we stopped tracking the plot…
and started tracking time itself.
“Wait… there’s an intermission?”
“I need an intermission from the intermission.”
It felt like we had lived multiple lives…
and Scarlett was still making the same decision.
That was the real realization.
Nothing was actually happening…
and everything was happening.
It was just people…
refusing to say what they meant…
for four hours straight.
Which, in hindsight…
felt like a very old version of modern dating…
By the time that final line landed…
we weren’t even laughing the same way anymore.
It wasn’t just funny.
It was weirdly accurate.
And that’s the part I didn’t expect.
We went in thinking we were going to survive something boring…
and instead…
we accidentally understood it.
Not the history.
Not the symbolism.
Just the simple truth underneath all of it…
People don’t change as much as they think they do.
They just get better costumes.
We all passed the test.
I don’t remember what I wrote.
I definitely don’t remember most of the flashcards.
But I remember that night.
Clear as day.
Because sometimes the thing you expect the least from…
ends up being the one you actually see.
where this feeling leads next…
another story about turning trouble into a memory…
a moment that didn’t feel important until it was…
the things we didn’t say…
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
