Live and learn
by Stephanie Piper
You know you're getting old(er) when you can't make it through 30 minutes of TV news without ranting about something.
Here's the latest: Enlightened do-gooders have decided that low grades are demeaning. The "C" could go the way of hula-hoops and long-playing records.
It's all about self-esteem. Kids who get mediocre marks feel negative about themselves. They suffer by comparison to high achievers. Their parents feel negative about that. They call the teachers and make sure the negative feelings are spread around. Next thing you know, that "C" is a nice, comfy "B."
But wait, one says. What happens when all these "B" students get to college and find out that the professors aren't interested in self-esteem?
No problem. Students get a chance to even the score on teacher evaluation forms. The measure of a course is whether it makes you feel good about yourself.
All this sounds to me like the ultimate bum steer, since the next stop is Real Life. This is where you discover that your self-esteem is a matter of indifference to 99.9 percent of the world's population, and the only thing that interests your boss is whether you do your job.
My own wake-up call came early, courtesy of a critic in a rumpled seer-sucker suit.
I arrived in freshman English class with a certain smug assurance. I had won a few essay contests in my day. I knew a well-constructed paragraph when I saw one, and I had a neat little collection of literary quotations, which I sprinkled through my prose. I figured I was home free.
I had bargained without Dr. Ralph Aiken. Tall, thin and formidable, he leaned against the lectern and suggested that we forget everything we thought we knew about literature. On the second day of class, he assigned a 1,000-word essay on a poem by e.e. cummings. My heart soared. Cummings was my all-time favorite poet.
I approached the paper the way I had handled my high school essays. The night before it was due, I sat down with a Coke and a Milky Way bar and my Smith-Corona portable. I thought for a while. Then I wrote the whole thing on a legal pad and typed it with a few minor revisions. Done deal.
I got a "C" and a selection of terse comments in Dr. Aiken's precise hand. One of them, written next to a paragraph I considered particularly brilliant, was the single word "flabby."
My smugness died a bitter death that day, and though I railed and cursed and made immediate plans to transfer to a college where my gifts were appreciated, I eventually came around. By the time I wrestled a "B" from Dr. Aiken, I had learned more than humility. I had shed some illusions and put my bag of all-purpose quotes in permanent mothballs. I was reading—and writing—with a new attention, sharpened by my professor's daily demand for clarity.
The "C" was a gift. Without it, I might have drifted flabbily through four more years. Instead, self-esteem battered but intact, I woke up to the examined life.
June 20, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 25
© 2002 Metro Pulse
| 
