By the time I got to college, writing and public speaking were my things–the niches I’d cut out for myself. I wasn’t nearly as good at either as I thought I was, but that’s what being a freshman is all about, right? I wanted to be a good student and I wanted to get good grades, both of which came so easily in high school but then proved to be elusive at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where I was surrounded by students for whom such things likewise came easily in high school.
Western Civ kicked my ass. Honestly, who can possibly read all that stuff? As a science, Geology looked a lot better in the catalogue than it turned out to be in the classroom. Anthropology was cool, but again, what’s with all that reading? Holy crap! The Yanomamo are interesting, I suppose, but not for five hundred pages!
English 101 was supposed to be my happy place, the slam-dunk. I’d been editor of my high school paper, for crying out loud. I’d never gotten less than an A in any English class in my life. Welcome to college, kid.
This was 1975 and Mr. Greene (not Professor, mind you, making him only an instructor of English, apparently an important distinction) was a groovy, happening guy. With shoulder-length hair and a porn star mustache, he wore bellbottoms and sandals–the kind with the leather loop around the big toe. While he never did it around us, I’m confident he toked maryjane in his off hours. I would not have been surprised to learn that he owned a set of finger cymbals.
Our very first assignment from Mr. Greene was to write a one-page descriptive essay. Easy-peasy.
My Pop-Pop Bonner had passed away shortly before, so I wrote of seeing him laid out in the funeral home for the first time. I’d never seen a corpse before, and I’d never encountered the overwhelming smell (stench, actually) of all those flowers. I wrote of my hesitation to approach the casket and of my refusal to touch his hand as my mom wanted me to do. The payoff of the piece was that Pop-Pop had always been a working man, and there in the casket was first time I’d ever seen the lenses of his glasses be clean. I cried when I wrote it. I thought it was great. I turned it in with the naive confidence of an easy A.
Next class, Mr. Greene handed it back to me ungraded, with the note, “See me.”
I saw him. He told me that my piece was non-responsive to the assignment. He wanted a descriptive essay. I gave him a story. He gave me till the next class meeting to try it again.
I did try it again. I described the bejesus out of that scene. I talked about my uncomfortable shoes, about the crucifix on the wall, the light through the windows, the color of the carpet–everything. If nothing else, I demonstrated my knowledge of adjectives. I turned it in.
“SEE ME.” Note the caps.
I saw him. “What is this? Are you mocking me?”
I honestly don’t remember my reply. I might not have replied at all. Being a keen reader of body language and listener to words, I knew that I’d done something wrong, but I for the life of me didn’t know what it was. I certainly was not mocking him. Then. I most definitely am now.
I got a third swing at the ball. Lucky me.
Back at my dorm, I vented to my buddy Paul who lived next door (and is now a professor of accounting), who, as luck would have it, also had Mr. Greene but at a different time, and declared the descriptive essay to be the simplest assignment in history. He let me read what he’d written.
Oh.
My final rewrite was about a vase with flowers in it. No action, no emotion. Just flowers and a vessel to hold them. I got my A.
To this day, I do not understand the point of that exercise. For a reader to bond with a scene–with the description–movement and emotion are essential. Looking back, I must have instinctively realized the importance of point of view in creating a scene. In reality, plot, setting character can never exist effectively without interacting, all of it filtering through point of view narration.
My version was better.
And I still miss Pop-Pop.
I looked for an academic definition of “descriptive essay” and found this, from Purdue:
“The descriptive essay is a genre of essay that asks the student to describe something—object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation, etc. This genre encourages the student’s ability to create a written account of a particular experience.” (Emphasis mine) Hard to figure out what made Greene see red.
This very post qualifies as a descriptive essay, with extra credit for your description of the guy’s sandals.
Maybe John’s was too good. Put Mr. Greene’s skills to shame.
Glad I did not have that college instructor. Sounds like they were just clocking time and didn’t want to have to do any work in reading assignments and helping students grow. Or at the very least they weren’t a very skilled instructor since they didn’t bother to explain themselves or convey an important writing lesson.
I had an experience with a horrible math teacher in grade school that forever killed any confidence or desire to pursue any more math than was necessary to get by. On the other hand, I can think of a few teachers who greatly encouraged me and that fired a love of writing.
If you’re going to teach, teach to inspire, not just clock time.
Interesting story, John. Mr. Greene may have been spending time with the green garden, under the grow lights, in the basement, rather than grading papers.
Sounds like a character to put in one of your books with an appropriate outcome.
John, sounds like Mr. Greene should have smoked a little more to mellow out before reading your essays. He was clearly in a cranky mood.
What a perfect description of him! I can almost smell the patchouli emanating from him.
If you tracked him down and sent this to him, his reaction would make another great TKZ essay.
I recall the required freshman English class. I don’t remember the assignment, but I scored one of the few decent grades in the class. The second assignment, those few of us who’d done well were handed back our papers first, and we all had scores in the miserable range. To me, that said the TA pulled the “good” ones, gave them low marks, and may or may not have even read them.
TAs go on to Hollywood and become “production assistants.”
I can see Mr. Greene sitting in an old folks home right now, bragging to anyone who will listen that he taught you how to write.
I love this line “Pop-Pop had always been a working man, and there in the casket was first time I’d ever seen the lenses of his glasses be clean. “
Oh, I assure you that I was entirely forgettable.
Wow, John . . . glad you didn’t continue writing “descriptive essays”, or I wouldn’t be able to feast on a JG story.
I agree with Kay. If he’s still around, he’s bragging about having “brought you up” into the writing biz.
Sheesh!
I had a similar experience w/ English 101 in college. In high school I finished 3rd in my class (144 students, lol), editor of newspaper and yearbook, contributed to creative writing magazine, and won statewide journalism contests. I was sure English 101 would be a breeze. First essay came back w/ C+ on it. I was horrified and outraged. When I approached the instructor, he told me to forget the big words–they didn’t impress anyone. To be myself when writing. Some of the best advice I’ve received as a writer. My grades went up from there. Then I started journalism classes my junior year–that’s another story . . . .
One of universal lessons of college–at least back in the day–was humility. Many of my professors took pleasure in convincing smart students that they were stupid.
My revenge was to boobytrap the faculty toilets at Christmastime. But that’s a different post.
Lookin’ forward to that post, John… 🙂
That instructor was some kid getting his Masters in English who wasn’t paid crap and didn’t know crap about instructing since he couldn’t even explain and give an example of a descriptive essay. I didn’t have to take the intro courses because some test I took in high school, but I experienced it first hand through my roommate, a math major. I’d vet all her assignment, but some of the instructor comments just made me shake my head.
I can’t make sense of that assignment, either, John. But I enjoyed your story today!
I learned long before entering college there were 2 types of classes:
o Those based on objective truths like math or physics, where 2+2 is always 4,
o and other classes based subjective truths, or more pointedly, just the opinion of the instructor, where 2+2 could be anything including the color purple.
When forced to participate in subjective truth classes, I found it best to first identify what the instructor wanted. If their subjective truth for the sum of 2+2 = purple, then that was the answer I provided.
All went well until I had a class with a very perverse instructor. At midterm I had accumulated points for test and homework grades that were 2x my nearest peer. I got a C which destroyed my 4.0 gpa. When asked why, the answer was the instructor didn’t believe in A’s because that didn’t leave anything for the student to strive for. There was no appeal. The instructor had absolute power. Of so they thought.
Guerilla warfare is always an option. Long story short, that instructor departed the profession with a nervous breakdown and never returned. Future students were saved from having to deal with them. The instructor did extract their pound of flesh. Without the gpa sufficient to obtain a scholarship, I had to sell 4 years of my life into wartime service in the military in return for college tuition.
Most people I deal with on a day-to-day basis think of me as a lovable Teddy bear. I much prefer that life but my corporate employer often saw fit to use me as the general from Machiavelli’s Prince. Someone who quickly put order to chaos when there was no time to take prisoners.
A psychopathic teacher was preying on my child and the principal refused to deal with it, very smugly laughing in my face. Unfortunately he got to see my “general’s” persona. The school was abruptly shut down and all the children were sent home early. The district’s legal staff had a talk with the principal and told him to play nice or lose his job. None of my children had to deal with such things prior to graduation from high school.