College story

When I was in high school, some of our teachers told us how hard college would be. They said that if a professor didn't like our term paper, he might tear it up in front of us.

I had no reason to doubt this. And of course, it scared me. I wanted to keep being babied at school, like always.

During my sophomore year of college, I took an English course on poetry. I was not a poetry fan by any means, but it was a required course for the English major. I had to pick one of the poems we'd studied and write a seven-page paper on it. I had some trouble figuring out what to write. In the end, I decided to write about Coleridge's use of weather in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (low-level weather junkie that I was.)

Days later, I sat on my bed with the Norton Anthology open to the Rime, and I tried to write this paper. Problem was, my theme seemed very flimsy, and I really didn't think I could fill up seven pages talking about it. The poem itself was not even that long.

But I pushed myself to write. And write. I felt like I was forcing each word. I quoted looooong passages from the poem (double spaced, of course). I also made sure I used as large a font as I could get away with.

I thought to myself, "This is the worst paper I've ever written. I barely believe my own thesis statement. I'll either fail, or I'll get an A and have a great story."

Anyway, the day came to hand in the paper. I went up to the professor's desk and handed it in with the others.

But I saw a chance to do something to help myself. Someone else was handing in a paper, and her title page said:

SHELLEY'S CLOUDS.

And get this -- she had actually taken a pen and drawn clouds all over her title page.

I couldn't believe it. Back in high school, my teeechurs were telling us that professors would tear up our papers if they weren't perfect, and here was a girl at an Ivy League school actually drawing clouds all over her English paper. (As an aside: A girl in another English class of mine one day brought a stuffed snail to class, for no reason at all. She just said, "I brought a snail today." Then we went on with the discussion on Virgil's The Aenid.)

So I made sure I slid my paper right UNDER the paper on clouds that had clouds drawn on it. (At least she didn't use construction paper or oaktag for her cover.)

A week later, I got the paper back, and I had gotten an A-minus. Of course, maybe it actually was a good paper. I dunno. Maybe I was graded on a curve.