5 Types of Guys You'll Meet in Your English Class

The Sensitive Poet

He plays guitar. He’ll write a sonnet about your eyes. He probably picked up poetry in middle school when it impressed his first girlfriend, and he’s been using it to woo women ever since. He’s unapologetic about stealing lines straight from Shakespeare, and you’re pretty sure you’ve heard that phrase in an 80’s pop song before, but his lips are so cute and pouty that you no longer care about the immorality of plagiarism.

The Barefoot Novelist

He doesn’t shower. Ever. But apparently that’s okay because he’s too much of an intellectual to care about things like hygiene. He’d rather take a nature walk or study philosophy and get down to the “gritty realism” of everything. He hasn’t started his book, but he’s talked to you about it every day since the semester started, and you’re pretty sure if he wrote as much as he bragged, he’d be done with it by the end of the week. You’re not sure how good it would be, though, considering you’ve never seen him pick up a pen. Or a notebook. The only thing that seems to be in his backpack is a beat up copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which he reads religiously.

The Next Great Director

He can’t write an essay to save his life, but he has every line of every Quentin Tarantino film memorized, and he’s already written his acceptance speech for when he wins an Oscar for best screenplay. He’s been working on his screenwriting masterpiece for the last six years at least, and he’s been saying he’s almost perfected it for five of them. His story involves a retired cop, a dead ex-wife, and too many explosions to count (not including the endless barrage of ‘F’ bombs), but he insists that it’s the most original story Hollywood has ever seen.

The Shy Guy

You probably didn’t notice him until halfway through the semester because he spends class quietly scribbling in his Moleskine journal in the back of the room. He’s a nice guy once you get to know him, and he’s overly modest about his writing skills, which aren’t half bad. He’s a great study buddy and a great friend, but if he wants to be more than that and you reject him, he’ll never let you forget what you’re supposedly missing out on. Some rendition of you will end up in his next short story, which will, unfortunately, make it into some sort of publication.

The Illiterate

You’re not really sure how he made it to college, and he’s only in your English class because it’s a required course or because his advisor thought it would be good for him to take to improve his writing skills. He’s your partner on every in-class group work assignment just because you had the misfortune of sitting next to him on the first day of school. It’s not that he’s a bad guy, it’s just that his papers and his grades are beyond saving, and you have to carry the workload. He helped you out on that math assignment last week, though (thank God), so you forgive him.