I'm not going to talk about Ms. Fleming. It's not necessary. Everyone knows what I think of her, and I know what people think of her. It's pointless to elaborate. I'm remembering, though, as I sit down to write my first 'body,' the lesson I thought I learned four years ago.

I hated Ms. Burdick's English class. I even thought I hated her. She had very definite and specific expectations of our writing, and was very strict in applying those expectations to whatever crossed her desk. She wanted such-and-such at this spot in paragraph so-and-so. She hated commas. We had to attach rough drafts with certain editor's marks. We needed to put this many sentences in this paragraph, that many paragraphs here and this many there. I did not like this. It chafed. I felt like an angsty adolescent whose teachers were stifling my creativity. You know the spiel. Everyone's said it at some point. So I ignored her rules. I wrote what I thought I wanted to, the rubric be damned. And my grades went to Hell. I realized I wasn't going anywhere. I was a rebel without a cause. The solution was simple, even though it felt asinine. I did what she asked. I wrote what she wanted. My grades picked up to where I wanted them, and my writing started to improve. Oh, I wouldn't admit it; I denied that there was any point to it up until about last year. I insisted I needed all of the commas, that this sentence should really go there, that the rubric was stupid and restricting. But in spite of my protestations, my work started to flow better, and my voice emerged the way I wanted it to, not the way I rough-drafted it. I learned the hard way that sometimes my teacher really did know best (or at least knew what she was doing).

Fast-forward two years. Mr. Heintz. Another challenging English class, another set of restrictions, another rubric, another bone to pick. This time it wasn't voice, fiction, book reports, and poetry. Now it was essays, the big kid work. I felt confined again. Again I lashed out, and again I fell back in line. I did the mindless prompts, and I can see now how I learned to organize my ideas. I wrote fast, edited faster, did two or three rough drafts. I wrote longer papers. I wrote shorter papers. I wrote what he asked for, because that was what I had to do. It paid off. I got my A, and I got my SAT essay off. Granted, I wasn't satisfied, but I knew in the back of my head that it was because I hadn't done what Mr. Heintz always told us to do. I didn't have time to edit, and I didn't attack the prompt the way he'd taught. I went in and thanked him the next day.

Another two years. Here, now. Another English class that's a pain in the tuchus. And you know what? I'm going to give it a shot. I will write to please. Let's see what happens.