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The Student
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Irony The Student
By: AManFromMaine
I was born and raised in a small town in Maine and went through the normal school systems. I was the typical guy…good at math and science but lousy in English. In fact I hated English! In high school I sorta fell into the wrong crowd. Maybe I was the ‘wrong crowd’ but it’s too much to think of right now.
I settled for some sort of equivalency test in order to graduate from (high) school. At the time I didn’t really care because life was all about parties and girls. I stayed out of college for a year because I guess I needed to figure out the World. I’m still trying to figure out the World but that too is too much to think out right now.
So I took this night class to see if I could get into some sort of accounting class. I don’t remember why I chose that course but I know it made sense at the time. I think I showed some sort of aptitude (did I spell that right?) with numbers. Anyway, I did real well and decided I would pursue a business education.
It was only after I finished the curriculum that I realized that I don’t even like accounting… let alone the greed of business. And a couple decades later (yeah I’m slow) I realized I got a degree in accounting to make my family proud. But this is getting way ahead of my story so let’s go back to my college days.
I went to a small private school that was once a women’s seminary… by the way, everything in Maine is ‘small’. The school was more noted for its’ liberal arts program and most students were well schooled in literature and, yeah, English.
I was never someone that enjoyed writing. I never understood English composition and lacked the confidence to write. I pretty much never did much reading, unless, Bobby Orr and The Big Bad Bruins counted. Trust me… at a liberal arts college it doesn’t!
Anyway, anybody that really knows me knows I only write about things that are inspired by true events in my life. And, well, I think writers pretty much wrote about, or were influenced by, ‘true events’. The same is true for a songwriter … some doctor gives them a Xanax and all of a sudden their Dr. Feel Good. Their? Should Dr. ---have been italicized? Did somebody write something called Dr. Feel Good? If they did they stole it from me.
So where was I? Oh yeah, I’m in college…wow…an idiot like me is in college. (By the way, you’ll think I’m an ‘idiot’ after I write more stories of stuff that’s happened to me.) Anyway, I must admit I thought the notion of being in college was pretty cool. And I did excel in most classes except, of course, English. I kinda got burnt-out and tired of all the reading and writing and analysis and EVERYTHING… I just wanted to get it all over with.
There is a lot of irony in this story. I think I did it again didn’t I? I am a little mad you know. I have all these great thoughts and find out somebody thunk it like a thousand years ago. From my perspective all these guys are stealing my thoughts...
I’m in my favorite class one day and the professor was explaining an assignment. I don’t remember the teachers name so let’s just call her Ms. Susan. (Normally I remember useless information but not this time I guess). So this woman starts to explain a descriptive story... she says write about what you see, smell, taste, and feel. I’m given her entirely too much credit but I think you get the jest of it. In any case, I would remember what she said.
Some time passes, maybe a few days or perhaps a week or two and I’m in my second favorite class. This professor was Dr. Brad and he taught short story. I took the class because it was ‘short’ and it would count as an elective. I think I read 12 books that semester. There was Ernie, Jim, Flannery and on and on and on…ugh!
So one day Dr. Brad asked a simple question. Do you think this guy was a good writer [in a structural sense that is]. I think he was referring to Joyce but I can’t remember. The class itself was full of young women that, as I’ve said, were well-schooled in literature. And of course there was me.
Anyway, nobody answered the question and I wouldn’t dare answer it. Not in front of these people. So Dr. Brad answered his own question. He said “No! He couldn’t write a sentence proper”. Or something similar to that, and I’m watching too many British flicks lately.
It’s around this point in time that I remembered what Ms. Susan said. I began to think that I could write like that; just write in a language that people could figure out, about what I see or smell or feel.
So I set out to complete Ms. Susan’s assignment. I was a bit late but it was, after all, English. It was a simple story about a concert I saw on July 4th, 1976. It was a huge concert that would have equaled many small towns together… from where I’m from anyway. The atmosphere was electric and touched upon all the senses.
So I passed on what I wrote and all was good (or so I thought). The assignment was completed and the story was somehow easy to write.
A little time passed and I was told the dean wanted to talk to me so I went to see THE dean. When I got there she was furious with me and I was totally shocked. She was accusing me of plagiarism! Make no mistake, this was an expulsion type of ‘furious’. I was stunned!
The dean wasn’t alone … Ms. Susan and Dr. Brad were there too. How dare these people! Plagiarism? From what?
Looking back I wish I could have said something eloquently but I didn’t … I was still trying to understand what was going on. I simply said ‘prove it’ and walked away. and when I 'walked away' I was steaming mad but couldn't appear to be. At this point I didn't think it would go over real well.
Then I began to think. Which is always a bad idea for me but I began to think. My paper MUST have been good! After all, who would react, as they did, to a poorly written assignment? It just had to be good!
The great irony (Did I say it was a 'great' irony?) or it’s at least ironic that teachers want to inspire students. In fact, this is what motivates an individual to teach. And when these faculty members realized their dream --- they never understood it. In fact, they sought to destroy the monster that they themselves created. Well, maybe not a 'monster' but a student that absorbed their knowledge and was inspired to write.
AManFromMaine
I re-read this again, about
I re-read this again, about five months after my first reading, and it seems even now more poignant, and more disturbing (the disturbance being how you, and many other students including myself, have been treated by academics). At my college, two very daunting projects were required, one in the sophomore year, one in the senior year (this one being the dreaded "senior thesis" which, once written, had to be deposited in the college library for peer review from one's classmades in the "senior seminar; this process was required to obtain the degree, and the peer review could be brutal). The sophomore project, in my major, was to write at least one hundred index cards containing bibliographical material on at least fifty---if memory serves correctly---monographs, articles, or reviews of a certain historical subject. My choice was critical reactions to the publication of Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, from 1818 to about 1950; with the majority being taken from the period of 1818-1851. Mary Shelley was not well thought of at my college (and as recently as 2001, at a private reunion luncheon put on by the then Chairman of the Department, that disapproval was still quite evident), and I was, more than one, reprimanded during that spring of 1978 for choosing that particular subject for my collection of cards. I did have the satisfaction of hearing an interview, back in 2019, with a Nobel prize laureate in the field of Genetics, who stated that Frankenstein should be required reading for all freshman science majors, and that they should be required to write and submit an essay discussing the ethical implications of the novel. So that was a vindication, of sorts, although at my alma mater, Mary Shelley is still not accorded the respect she so richly deserves.
*
I was actually also reprimanded, openly, in a class on the poetry of T.S. Eliot, for raising a question the instructor believed was inappropriate. The class was given only once every three years. Admission was by invitation only, and no freshman was permitted to participate. I took the class in the first quarter of my Junior year. My question, which seemed very appropriate to me, was to ask about the influence of the poet's first wife, Vivienne, upon his poems, and as a presence in the poems (she is all over them up until her death in 1942). The instructor literally slammed his pen down on the table, became very red in the face, and, in a very unrestrained "outdoor" voice, hollered at me to "shut up." My classmates all seemed very embarrassed by this exchange; and when I attempted to point out that this question was as deserving of fair inquiry as any other question about the poetry might be, I was again ordered to "shut up," and to never again raise a question about Vivienne Eliot in that class again. Later, when the final grades were assessed, the instructor told me that while I had earned an "A" for my overall participation, he did not feel that I deserved it, but he had no choice but to give it.
*
I suspect this kind of thing, including unfounded accusations of plagiarism or of "copying" on exams, goes on a lot more frequently than most people think, or even notice. Universities and colleges are supposed to be places of free inquiry; but this free inquiry seems, more realistically, to be like Soviet freedoms: some people are more free than others; and most of them are not free at all. To have been reminded, in 2001 (twenty-one years after graduation) of a sophomore choice in a single glass, and to again be berated for that choice, indicated to me that such perceived "infractions" against the academic establishment are never, ever, fully forgiven or expunged. And that is a terrible, and terrifying, flaw in the so-called "higher education" system. I am very sorry you had to experience some of this; and I think all such experiences like this---yours, mine, and all the others of which we do not know---could be handled in a much more civil way.
J-Called
JeielThank you for your
Jeiel
Thank you. At least, as a
Thank you. At least, as a bystander, I have had the satisfaction of hearing a nobel laureate recommend Mary Shelley as an ethicist in her fiction; and of seeing the "rehabilitation" of Vivienne, which started, in a very dramatic way, in 1991 (the monolythic interpretation that she was a shrew, and nothing more than that, has been ameliorated; and many of her behaviors, misinterpreted before, are receiving the benefit of objective, and calm, inquiry).
J-Called
I am so sorry that you were
I am so sorry that you were unjustly accused
I'm very glad you started
I'm very glad you started to write... you remind us of the power of words to change people's
lives.. I had the privilege of being in your beautiful state for a week.. saw someone take a picture of a woman standing in front of a 'moose crossing' sign
Please invite any writing friends of yours to join
I sent my question by PM, and
I sent my question by PM, and will now go on with my comment. I applaud your effort here. To my mind (and I have limited, very limited, experience with this form) autobiography is one of the most difficult forms to write; for how does one know what to include, and what to exclude? But you have kept it quite succinct and readable, I recently read Betjeman's poem, Summoned By The Bells, which is an autobiography of his teen years up to his entrance into college . . . and he wrote it in blank verse, like an epic poem. In my opinion, it would have been dull in prose; but, in verse, it was just not something I could get through. But that helped me to appreciate your essay more. I am curious, though . . . how, in writing something like this, does one figure out what to include, and what to exclude?
J-Called