Missed the Opportunity

This afternoon I was planning to go to a reading at Chapman College, the place where I would like to teach a workshop. I had sent poems from the yoga series to the director of the MFA program there, and he said to contact the person heading up the poetry reading series, but she, as you will perhaps recall, said if I didn't have a book, they weren't interested, and recommended open mics at the local coffee house.
I wanted to go to the first in their series anyhow, to get to know people and to hear the reader, who won the Pulitzer for her first book of poems. But I had a set of papers (short ones) from my Tues/Thurs class, and even though not many of the students turned them in, it took too long to get through the ones I had, particularly since I discovered that I have a genius in the class, and I couldn't go to the reading. Every once in a while, a person like this crops up.
This guy is so polished and sophisticated, but he doesn't come to class much. He is probably bored. I don't know why he isn't in an honors section of the class. I wrote him a note and told him that if a particular assignment seemed pointless to him (except for papers), he can speak to me and I'll try to devise an alternative just for him. It's a pleasure to work with a student this bright, after all.