Scott's Narrative

Please give me feedback on my narrative. I am ready for research and reading.

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It’s not that I hated high school, really. It was a breeze. Not much challenge. I made the grades, and the teachers left me alone. The only vivid memory I have is all of the red ink left on my writing papers, but it didn’t change anything for me. I still made good grades whether I revised or not. The ink just seemed like a rite of passage to go through, so I lived through four years of it and nothing changed. I walked the stage passing from ho hum to what I expected to be more ho hum.

I arrived that first morning of college with few expectations. I mean, it was a small town junior college fifteen miles from my small town high school. What could they really have to offer me that I did not already have? As I drove in the parking lot, I readied myself for a long day. The disgustingly hot weather did nothing but ensure me that the day only offered a chance to sit in the air conditioner and wait out the clock.

My first class of the day was grammar and composition with Linda Jarvis at the helm. Older woman. Blue hair. Typical English teacher look, at least from my experiences. Her enthusiasm for the course was evident from the start as she read through the roster and syllabus in her monotone voice. Boy. She was as glad to be there as I was. “Assignments are due on the first class day of each week,” her voice droned on. “Late papers will only be accepted after one day at the cost of twenty-five percent,” she continued unenthusiastically.

Then something seemed to change in her demeanor, albeit slowly and quietly.

“Get out some paper and write me a note about your English experiences. Put it on the corner of my desk when you are through, and I will see you next time.”

She then sat down and proceeded to start scribbling something out in her notebook. We just sat there looking at each other as if we had been abandoned. Gradually, pencils scratching paper was heard throughout the room as thoughts became written words. We were busy with our first writing assignment. Dutifully, I took my time using every ounce of writing strategy I had learned in four years of high school English boot camp. I placed my paper in the appropriate spot on her desk and giddily left my first college class twenty minutes early. I loved the college life. What I did not know was that Mrs. Jarvis was setting me up for failure.

The second day of English class began much quicker than the first. After she took roll and assigned some work from the textbook, she began calling students to her office one by one. I initially figured it was her chance to meet each of us personally, but as I saw the sober looking faces come back in one at a time, I knew it was the first experience with the dreaded red pen.

It was my turn to head in to no man’s land. After watching those who went before me, I felt like a dead man walking. “If high school English teachers used the red pen, college English teachers had to use red markers,” I thought.

I walked the tiled hallways concerned with what I was about to confront. As I turned into her office, I was presented with the unexpected. She was smiling. “Okay,” I thought. “So she really enjoys the torture she places upon students. What a sicko.”

“Sit down, Mr. Floyd.”

Nobody ever called me mister before. I took it as a sign of respect and sat comfortably in the swivel chair opposite hers.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied, figuring my manners might get me some kind of reprieve.

“Mr. Floyd, you went to Henderson High School, didn’t you?” she asked. I just nodded affirmative. “Well it is obvious in the structure of your writing. All of the Henderson kids write like this. You are very structured and deliberate in your writing.”

I was grinning to myself at this point figuring this was a good thing. I was wrong. “All of that is wonderful if you are writing a research paper, Mr. Floyd, but it does nothing to let me hear what you have to say in your writing.”

Huh? What the heck? Hear what I have to say in my writing? Couldn’t she just read it like everyone else?

“Let me give it to you straight, Scott.”

Oh, shoot. She went to the first name. This couldn’t be good.

“You are a good writer. I can tell from what you turned in that you have a personality that just wants to come through here. Let it. Take some chances and see how it turns out. I want you to remember the rules of the road for grammar, but consider taking some detours some time. Any questions?”

Questions? You wouldn’t believe what was racing through my mind at this point. How long should it be then? So, spelling won’t count? What about losing twenty five points for using a fragment? I did what any respectable student would do at this point. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, wrung my hands in my lap, and boldly answered, “No, Ma’am.”

That basically ended the first in a series of what I have come to know as a writing conferences. It was at this point I understood the looks of horror on the faces of the other kids in class. It wasn’t the red pen scaring them to death. It was freedom. Freedom in writing is a terrifying thing when you have never had it before. Those were looks of terror, not from the red pen, but from the lack thereof. I was entering virgin territory, and I was scared to death.

I spent the next four months getting used to this new freedom. Fragments actually had a positive place in my writing. I could use the slang country terms in my writing that I grew up with. Mrs. Jarvis spent more time with me over the four papers I did for her that semester than any other English teacher ever had. It was an experience that matured my writing more than the previous four years in high school.

I went on to take several more of Linda Jarvis’s English classes. I went from being a business major to being an education major with an emphasis in English. Her outlook on writing began a new season of learning for me. I quickly realized that I could never know everything I needed to about writing regardless of how perfect my format and punctuation was. Not only did I grow as a writer, I grew as a teacher. My life had been changed as well as the lives of thousands of students to come.