I’m going through old files in the garage. I found a bunch of old assignments, worksheets, lessons from when I taught at Preston High School. 🗂They are all neatly filed in color-coded hanging files. Most of them I sent to be shredded. 🗂I have many of them in electronic format on USBs or more recently, in the cloud or Google Drive. So there’s no need to keep them. 🗂
Me: Wow, I was like a really dedicated teacher.
Jackson: Before we came along.
🗂In my garage purging, I came across these papers pictured above. I’m keeping these two essays from college that were randomly stuck in those teaching files. 🗂I probably wrote these with some ancient version of Microsoft. I believe floppy disks might have been involved, too. 🗂 Moreover, they are two graded papers—one from a Shakespeare class and one from a poetry class. With comments to boot! 🗂
🗂I got a B+ on both these essays. You might think I got As in writing throughout my schooling. Nope! The A was elusive in my college and graduate level English classes. I’d get an occasional A- thrown my way. But upon rereading these, I think if I ever got an A-, it was because professors liked me. 🗂I showed up on time, participated in discussions, took notes, and generally appeared interested in class. 🗂Behavior that was always good for a B+ or A- on essays that were probably more B / B- level.
🗂I showed the papers to C.K. and noted how much my writing has improved over the years. 🗂He said that recently he read that people actually don’t really become good writers until their 30s and 40s. 🗂I think that holds true for me—I am a far better writer now than in high school, college, or graduate school. 🗂I guess it’s kind of an obvious notion. 🗂 And wouldn’t it be sad to peak in college? 😬
🗂But, as I said to the girls at Hockaday when I did a leave replacement there last year, I’ve improved as a writer over the years not because of the As but because of the Bs and sometimes Cs I’ve received on papers. 🗂
🅰️➕