Mr. Scott’s Horrible Paper
I never really considered myself “a student.” I always enjoyed learning things that sparked my interest, but public school education did not meet that criteria in my mind. Writing was, at this point in my life, something that did not spark my interest, that is, academic writing. I see writing in school as much more often than not, you are writing about something that doesn’t particularly interest you. I guess my sophomore year was a specific time in my life where that conclusion about writing became cemented in my brain. Not only was I frustrated with a particular assignment, but I was frustrated with school in general, specifically academic writing and the fact that I must do it time and time again.
My sophomore year of high school, much like all of the other three years of high school, was not my favorite, or by any means an academic achievement. Throughout high school I was assigned essays and other various forms of writing. Up until my sophomore year I don’t recall ever being so “shut off” from writing in school, I hadn’t yet gained my “angry,” “skeptical” view towards school and different assignments. Through my second year of high school I stayed on the path of “average student”, I wasn’t very interested in my classes, I floated through high school with Cs, Bs and occasionally an A. One class in particular that I dreaded to go to every time the block came around in my schedule was american literature with Mr. Scott.
Mr scott was a middle aged man with blonde hair, big round glasses, and a rather “goofy” face, his voice was nasally and his sarcasm and stubbornness was as obvious a trait to me as the color of his hair. My class had about seven boys and about five girls, among the boys in the class were three of my closest friends, Cadhan, Lucas, and Nick. We had small book groups in class, my group, Cadhan, Lucas, Nick, and I read Jon Krakauer’s “Into The Wild.” After reading was completed, Mr Scott gave a very small, vague lesson on Literary Criticisms, In essence we only read one or two examples, no real practice with understanding, and breaking down the text was initiated. With our little knowledge of researching and locating quality and credible sources, as well as our very minimal knowledge of literary criticism’s, Mr Scott assigned our task.
An essay, it was supposed to be two to three pages long. Individually our task was to locate a decent literary criticism, an opinion, a view, from another writer about Krakauer’s “Into The Wild.” I remember Mr. Scott as being no help through the process of this assignment. Not only did he come across as very unhelpful, but Mr Scott never illustrated a deep passion for literature, or a will to maybe pull that passion out of his students. I remember my friends and I asking for help and receiving little to none. We were all completely lost with the assignment. “What is the point of this Mr Scott?” Mr scott would immediately answer with a quick and rather obnoxious “I don’t know.” I remember laughing with my friend lucas, it became a joke, a horrible assignment, with a horrible mentor.
It was very frustrating for me to write my perspective and view about someone else’s opinion from someone else’s writing about a book I was forced to read. None of which made any sense to me. Upon finally completing “something” to turn in as an excuse for my essay I remained frustrated with the class and the paper. It was so stupid I thought, I had to put in effort on something that I felt had no value what’s so ever. I got my paper back a week later and saw that I failed it with a 55%. I said to my friends right away “This is such bullshit!” I didn’t care for the teacher or his class before then and that moment certainly fueled that fire.
I hated writing in school from that point on, every time a writing assignment was coming a bad feeling emanated in my mind. I became shut off from writing in school, the rubrics, the citations, the formatting, it all pisses me off really. I feel that high school, Mr Scott among others, became the unlucky figures to blame. As I continue my career as a student, moving on to higher education, these skills that i was supposed to acquire in high school became seemingly more necessary and important. This meant that writing after high school was going to be a lot more difficult.
I don’t have a good opinion towards writing papers, and now, that opinion is becoming an increasingly destructing view to have. Although, I am aware writing is not going to go away. Something I have learned through the early stages of higher education is that, unlike high school, you often write papers about certain subjects that you particularly enjoy, or have an interest in. So I guess a significant idea, one that I hope to emulate is keeping an open mind towards literature. It’s necessary and it’s not going away anytime soon. Keeping an open mind allowed me skate through high school, to graduate, and attend The University Of New England and take challenging classes. Many of which that particularly interest me.
