Karen's+expressive+reflective+final+draft

The Motivating Factor Do you ever have those moments where you look back at all you’ve accomplished and think “Wow, I did that!”? I have them quite often -when I finish that ridiculously long book, get back a paper with an exceptional grade, or can finally display that stellar piece of art work. Yet, none of those things surprises me more than when I look back at how much I’ve accomplished so far in my college career. I may only be a junior, but I have survived so many situations that a prior version of me wouldn’t have been able to handle. That extremely hard class where you don’t learn anything useful, that class only taught by the “horrible” teacher, that supposedly “easy” class that ends up being more work than all the rest, that studio class that sucks up every last bit of free time, that evening class all the way across campus based solely on class discussion - the list could go on and on, but I never could have made it this far without a little extra push.

It was senior year of high school - a time to just relax and enjoy the last little bit of the high school experience before moving on to college, life, and other things. Most of my peers just wanted to enjoy the ride and coast to graduation. They took intro to art, weight training IV, nutrition and foods for the like the third time, and sadly that math class they had been trying to avoid since freshman year. While everyone else toned down their schedules, I continued to build mine up. I took pre-calc, college writing, that dreaded first year of Spanish, some independent study art, and not one but two advanced placement courses: biology and literature.

I would have to say the class I was most excited for was definitely AP lit. I loved to read and found most of the books I had read through school enjoyable. I was a pretty decent writer and at this point I was still toying with adding English education to my already determined art education plan. It didn’t hurt that most of my friends were taking AP lit. In fact, a good portion of the senior class was taking it (probably because their parents refused to let them totally slack off). Then of course, there was the teacher Ms. Murray. Ms. Murray was the most coveted language arts teacher at Three Rivers High School. She was knowledgeable and told intriguing stories that could somehow relate to everything we learned. She made you think - about the literature, yourself, and the world. And yet, Ms. Murray still knew every student on a personal level giving each student a nickname and connecting them in some way to the literature. I’m sure in her eyes I will always be “KC” who read the part of Laura Wingfield in //The Glass Menagerie// so well//.//

I remember being so excited on the first day. Then I got the syllabus. Instantly there was this sickening feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach as Ms. Murray outlined the expectations of the class. “AP Lit is meant to be a college level course, and I expect college level work,” she said. She droned on about weekly vocabulary with definitions, etymology, and sentences; fifty to one-hundred pages of reading a night; papers, projects, and oral presentations; and regular in-class work. This was going to be hard, a challenge actually. I had always done well in school. I never had to be pushed. I never really had to study. I never had to put in a huge amount of effort to do well. Looking around the room, I wasn’t the only one experiencing “syllabus shock.” I was grateful however that at the time I was unemployed and not involved in music or sports - just lots of homework.

The first few weeks were tough. I had wanted to give up and drop the class, but I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it. If I did, it would be like I had failed on purpose because I didn’t even try. Those first weeks were the equivalent of army boot camp in my mind and Ms. Murray was the drill sergeant. She was definitely a pusher. Pushing you to do better – write more, expand your ideas, contribute in class, read more, think outside the box, get involved, apply to more colleges, write more scholarship essays, and just when you thought you couldn’t be pushed anymore, she would give you an even bigger shove. But just as boot camp makes you stronger and prepares you for what is yet to come, Ms. Murray and AP lit did that for me.

Our first reading assignment was Homer’s //Iliad//. At first, I could never imagine getting through the whole five hundred plus page book in three weeks let alone attempting to understand it. A bunch of Greeks and Trojans killing each other in hundreds of gross ways wasn’t really my idea of fun. But Ms. Murray kept pushing. “It’s a staple of literature,” she said. “Think of how accomplished you will feel when you’ve finished, and how much potential jeopardy knowledge you will have!”

Ms. Murray knew how to keep our attention and encouraged our interest in the story. She worked on trying to create //The// //Iliad: A Musical//. She enthusiastically went over the notes for each book sometimes acting out sections or drawing on the board. To better understand the characters, she separated us into groups (Trojans, Trojan Gods, Greeks, and Greek Gods) and then assigned us a character that fit with our personality. We listened to songs and looked at artwork that fit with the time period and storyline. She worked to make reading a centuries old epic poem an enjoyable process. The more involved I became, the easier it was to read, and I actually wanted to know how it ended. It was such a satisfying feeling when at the end of our three week reading period, I was one of only five people in our class who had read the whole thing.

It wasn’t all fun and games though. There were plenty of reading quizzes, notes, and papers and Ms. Murray was a strict grader. If your vocabulary sentences were too juvenile, you were expected to re-do them. If she thought you had something to say or weren’t participating in discussion, she would stop and make you direct it. She refused to accept “I don’t know” as an answer and would sit and wait for you to come up with something to say. Ms. Murray demanded good writing which would then be built upon throughout the year. I remember her ripping apart my first //Iliad// paper because I could do better. No teacher had ever done that before let alone given me what my high school over-achieving self thought of as a bad grade – a B+. How could a teacher not like my writing? What do you mean I didn’t use enough support? Why wasn’t my topic clear? Most of the feedback I had ever gotten from teachers consisted of “Great as always. Can I keep this as a sample?” I was shocked, disappointed, even a bit humiliated. I decided then and there that I hated English. It was stupid.

Yet, Ms. Murray wasn’t done pushing. I had begrudging rewritten my paper – added more quotes, changed some things around, tightened up my organization. It wasn’t enough and when I got it back a second time, it was still covered in scrawled purple comments. To my mind this screamed “not good enough,” and to a girl whose identity revolved around doing well in school it was a crushing blow to who I thought I was. When the second paper rolled around, I buckled down and worked on it. I took her comments into consideration. I found people who would actually revise and edit my paper seriously. When I thought I was done, I worked on it even more. Finally turning that paper in was a very rewarding moment in my life. Was it an A+ paper? No, not really but it was exceedingly better than the first one and I decided English wasn’t that bad after all.

I know now that Ms. Murray’s tough love approach made me a better student and helped to prepare me for all the “hard” situations I’ve come to face in college. Ms. Murray may have forced me to read the //Iliad// and viciously slaughtered my paper, but she also forced me to stop coasting by on good enough and find that 110% work ethic. She taught me the art of sanity breaks –especially when feeling too overwhelmed. She taught me to relate to the literature. You can always find someone in a similar or worse situation. She taught me to appreciate what I read. You didn’t have to like every book you read (something I’d always felt I had to do). She taught me that one bad paper wasn’t the end of the world. She taught me to start being the person I’d always been afraid to be.

Without her and that class, I don’t think I could have survived my first semester of college, my first writing intensive class, or that semester of eighteen credit hours. Without Ms. Murray, I probably wouldn’t be taking this class because I wouldn’t have had the guts to add that extra English major.