Boy 1
"Can you tell me how to calculate my average?" asked Rudy, a potential 2011 valedictorian from a nearby high school. Rudy is in competition for the top honor with a number of other rivals who also have perfect GPAs. Rudy hopes A's in a couple of college courses will help distinguish him from this crowd, so here he is, slaving away at the local community college. And Rudy is making an A in my class. He is careful and competent; mechanically, his writing is flawless, though long-winded and too safe to be interesting.Boy 2
My question is why would he need to calculate an average when everything I have marked is an A? Is he so competitive that he must know that he has a 99.8 in case he has heard someone else might have a 99.7? I can imagine how hard it must be to live in his head, where he constantly measures himself against everyone else. Only the numbers matter, not repartee with peers before class, not the joy of running with an idea even if it takes him over a cliff. I hope his parents would say, "We wish he'd relax." I hope they are not applauding this super-competitiveness.
At the opposite extreme is Paul, who refuses to accept that he's not passing the course. Despite the frequent absences [and ensuing zeros from missing work] and a steady stream of Ds and Fs on assignments, Paul keeps asking, "But I'm doing okay, right?" No, sweetheart, you're not. "What if I make A's on everything else? Then I'll be okay, right?" Perhaps, I say. But then Paul misses yet another class, and I just shrug my shoulders. I would hate that heavy blanket of denial trapping my brain.Boy 3
In an essay, Timothy wrote, "I'm a Christian and still a vurgeon, but it's hard with all these girls and their tits bursting out of their shirts ... " A vurgeon? I wouldn't be able to spell either if I lived in a young male body unable to get any release because my religion had such unrealistic expectations of me. Timothy's Christianity requires no fornicating, but it's summer in Florida—highs every day in the mid 90s—so exposed skin abounds. This poor young man doesn't have enough of an independent spirit to disregard the rules of his religion, so when temptation finally wins, he'll have all that unnecessary guilt and self-recrimination for a biological imperative millions of years in the making.Boy 4
Before submitting his first essay, confident Bradley told his classmates, "To make a paper good, all you have to do is add enough literary devices. They're impressive!" Bradley learned this trick in AP English, though he did not score high enough on the exam for college credit. Now he's taking freshman composition to earn those three hours. Despite his failure at the AP exam, he blindly believes what Dr. High School English Teacher has said. I'm hoping that this PhD actually taught that certain devices used with skill and care are impressive, not to hang similes at the ends of sentences like ornaments on a Christmas tree. I'm hoping that this PhD explained the value of clear communication, not faking a reader out with "devices." During one short paragraph describing his love of soccer, I learned that athleticism smiles on Bradley "like a mother on her newborn baby," that his skills get the attention of coaches "like a child grabbing a cookie from a cookie jar," and that scoring goals is "as easy as a Sunday morning breeze."
I have gotten Bradley to stop his nonsense—but only because continuing the practice negatively affects his grade, not because he believes that I have any real writing wisdom. On the first day of class, he asked, "Should we call you Dr. Lightbulb?" When I said no, he concluded that I was thus inferior to Dr. High School English Teacher.
Oh, well. Eventually Bradley will figure out that clear communication, not decorated writing, is what impresses readers. And college is, after all, the opportunity to try out new ideas and learn what works best, just like a teenage girl shopping for a new pair of jeans at the mall—ha!
