Sophomore English Class by Michelle

Sophomore English Class by Michelle - November 2013 Scholarship Essay

High School is four years of various nuggets of information being thrown at students while the student’s mind is torn between the information and trying to socially survive each day. There are some students who do this well, there are others of us who had a few good pieces of information stick, and stay for years after the blackboard has been wiped clean. One of the main pieces of information that has stuck for this student was delivered in a Sophomore English class. Our teacher was a college professor who was tired of students starting college without proper writing skills. She decided to take a position in the local high school and teach us not only how to write well but why it is important communication tool. Grammar is important yes, but if the reader does not grasp the writer’s meaning it really does not matter.

Back then our papers were hand written, no one had a computer, no one emailed or texted, no one tweeted. Communications during class were on handwritten notes passed from student to student behind the teachers back, a thank you note to your family for your birthday gifts, some of us had actual pen and paper pen pals. Out of school it was via the household telephone. The medium of the written word had gone a different direction than when Mrs. VanTil greeted our Sophomore class but the lessons remain just as important if not more so than they did back then.

There have been many times since that year when Mrs. VanTil and her lessons have popped into my head. Even now when I read the written word it astounds me when adults do not know how to construct a sentence or paragraph. Irritation sets in when an email is badly written or someone answers my text with a “K”. Many adults do not grasp the need to proof read, or understand why using appropriate adverbs is important. Whenever I am thanked or congratulated for writing something a little thank you to Mrs. VanTil is said.

Now that I have gone back to school online at 41 the written word is crucial to my success as a student. When we have team assignments it tends to fall to me to piece a paper together, proof read it, and use those lessons from the past to make it appear seamless. I can do this so very many years later because someone took the time to teach me how to it the right way. The true value of the lesson did not register in High School. However, I am more thankful today for those lessons than even Mrs. VanTil would have ever thought all those years ago.