As college students begin another semester of classes, MPR essayist Peter Smith is reminded of his days as an undergraduate at St. John's University in Collegeville.

Smith has new book out called "A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors." It's a memoir full of little missteps, calamities and people — good and bad — he's met along the way. In this excerpt, Smith remembers a professor whom he probably could have treated a little more politely.

Listen here.