Not exactly the most happening place to be.
Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Sherwood Anderson, and others,
Writing essay after essay-oh, brother.
Used to getting As, I received a cursed B,
My writing, it seemed, wasn't where it needed to be.
I rewrote, revised, and rewrote some more,
Silently mocking the teacher, that mean old bore.*
All year I toiled, but to no avail,
B after B appeared, no matter how much I wailed.
"I'm trying my best! What more does she want?
I got As before! Does she expect a savant?"
I tried to give up,
To my mother I appealed.
She said, "No way, baby--
Suck it up and deal."
Resigned to my fate,
I worked without zest.
Bracing for the Bs,
But still doing my best.
One day, I guess,
It all must have clicked.
My paper had an "A,"
I asked if she was sick.
"No," she said calmly,
"I feel perfectly fine.
You synthesized and analyzed,
Your thinking was divine!"
I realized then the journey that is learning-
While requiring effort, thinking skills I was earning.
I discovered that true learning takes practice and work.
(And that I had been acting like a big ugly jerk.)
*Not really; her class was very engaging. But that's what I thought at the time.
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In my last post, I wrote about "honors" students. Well, I was one. I knew I wasn't the best and the brightest (those students had already let everyone know who they were), but I was starting to get complacent.
All it took was one difficult, frustrating, determined, and wonderful teacher to push me out of my comfort zone on the path to true understanding. For that, I will always be grateful.