Letter to my English Professor

Dear Keith, I like English. In grade school, I was the oddball that admitted how much I enjoyed grammar classes. For some reason, I liked learning how to construct sentences, what each part was called. I have long since forgotten the small details I learned in grade school, but forgetting them has been a gradual process. Through experience, I have learned to feel what makes a good sentence, storing the knowledge somewhere in my unconsciousness. I have learned how I like to write, which rules I follow, and which rules I choose to ignore (I still am learning).

In middle school, I was introduced to the five paragraph essay, which I hated, and poetry, which I loved. Whenever my teacher assigned a five paragraph essay, which was rather frequently, I would sit at my desk and think about how stupid it was. It felt like I was writing the same thing over and over, just adding different words for different topics. This turned me off of writing. I started viewing it as this boring act, tedious busy work. Although I did not like writing them, five paragraph essays taught me how to construct a paragraph, which is invaluable.

Towards the end of my eighth grade year, we started learning about poetry in English class. Here was a form that took everything I had grown to hate about writing and thrown it out. I was free to break the rules that I had just spent years of my life learning. I felt free, writing was now something that I enjoyed and looked forward to rather than something I avoided avidly. Though new structures and terms were introduced, I relished learning them.

I started keeping journals in which I wrote (terrible) poetry and anecdotes. I discovered online blogs, with which I shared my words with the world. I was feeling good about writing, it was an enjoyable activity for me. That is, it was until I started my English class in the winter of freshman year. Our teacher assigned us one boring book to read and report on after another. Writing once again became unattractive to me. I hated writing the summarization of a book that I found boring, feeling like I was not actually saying anything at all. I quickly forgot all about writing and reading for enjoyment and moved on to trying to fit in.

My sophomore year was worse. The English teacher was a hard-ass who hated me, at least that's what it felt like. Our assignments consisted of reading a classic work of English literature and answering a list of seven questions, the most important one being "What is the theme?" We then had a research paper that was all we worked on for two months straight. Me being the procrastinator I am, I waited until the last minute to complete each part, sometimes giving up altogether. I hated writing more than ever. The teacher also taught us that there was only one interpretation to a text, and that it was located solely within the text. She claimed that this was the only way of viewing a text and everything else was full of shit. I later learned in your Literary Analysis class that this is called New Criticism, and that there are in fact a multitude of ways of viewing a text.

Junior year, I had a teacher who was the polar opposite. She taught us that a text means however we interpret it to mean. She also conducted class different than I had ever experienced. Each weekend, we were assigned to write one page minimum about whatever we wanted. I found myself looking forward to writing each weekend, sitting in front of the computer and typing out small stories, snippets of my life, and the occasional poem. I started writing again, not just on the weekends for class, but whenever I felt so inclined. I filled notebook after notebook with my musings. In class, the teacher also encouraged discussion of literature, listening to us students as much as we listened to her. English once again felt alive to me.

I had the same teacher for my senior year English class as I had sophomore year. It was much of the same thing, though I found my voice in her class this time. I started challenging her in my assignments for class. I started to realize what I believed, what I wanted out of life, where I wanted to go, and had the knowledge and experience to put it down on paper. I learned to argue effectively with my writing that year.

After high school, I continued to write on my own time. I wrote poetry mostly. I attended Western Michigan in the fall, and, overwhelmed by the freedom of moving out of my parents and the burden of living off campus, soon started to second guess my decision to go to college. Most of my time was spent at the coffee shop writing and smoking cigarettes. I stopped going to classes and failed all but one. The next semester I vowed to go to all my classes whenever they met, but quickly fell back into my old routine of waking up at noon and spending the day at the coffee shop.

It was about the middle of my second semester that I realized that I wanted to devote my life to writing and all that it entails. I considered dropping out to pursue writing full time (which I pretty much was already doing), but was convinced otherwise. I again failed my classes, and was booted not only from Western, but also lost the Kalamazoo Promise.

I got my act together this past year, attending KVCC and getting my grade point average back up. I am currently pursuing a degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing, transferring back to Western next year. I also want to attend grad school sometime in the future to get a masters degree. I spend much of my time writing and editing poetry and short stories. I look forward to the next eight weeks in your class, and I enjoy the way you teach.

Sincerely,
Jesse Duke