I’ve been struggling to write. I am not proud of my last couple posts. “Weeb vs Walt” and “Wapanese” are not my greatest works.
Anime is trash.
So are those posts.
What is my greatest work?
First off, let’s stop calling them works. I don’t have works. They’re not published or anything. They’re not critically acclaimed. They’re hardly acclaimed at all.
In fact, most of my “works” have been ripped to shreds by college English teachers.
Looking back, I had some rough teachers. I know I said I can be a difficult student sometimes, and that might have caused the colorful remarks on most of my essays, but I also think it’s hard to improve your writing when you’re constantly being told “you’re a bad writer.” I had a few teachers tell me that. I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s productive.
I wasn’t especially fond of my teachers in college.
I liked one of them, though.
I had one teacher I absolutely adored.
I want to leave names out of these posts, so I’ll call her Doctor.
Dr. W.
Dr. W was probably the smartest, most interesting person I’ve ever met. She is the reason my English major had an emphasis on British Literature.
Dr. W was also straight out of an Indiana Jones movie.
Dr. W was a woman in her late 60’s maybe early 70’s. She had long platinum blonde hair and often wore a large trench coat with a pant suit underneath. To each class, she rolled around a large suitcase which I can only assume was filled with ancient Egyptian manuscripts or fossils of Germanic runes.
To each class, she carried a big, ear-to-ear smile.
I took three of her classes: Medieval Literature, Beowulf, and Arthurian Literature.
I loved all her classes. Arthurian literature was especially wild.
This is not to say Dr. W was an easy person to get along with. She was strict and stubborn and eccentric and more tangential than an 8-year-old with ADHD.
But she was passionate about medieval literature. She had the same tenacity for Beowulf as I do for animated television. And her passion was contagious.
And she was real and I respected the hell out of her.
The first time I walked into Dr. W’s Medieval Literature class, she was screaming at a student. This student thought it was ok to be on her laptop.
To be fair, that’s how most college classes are. You take your laptop out and surf the internet while pretending to take notes for an hour to an hour and a half. I’ve done this. We’ve all done this.
Dr. W has not done this.
Dr. W has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a masters and doctorate degree from the University of Washington, and a Juris Doctor degree from Santa Clara University. Dr. W is fluent in several languages including Old English, a language not spoken since the 12th century.
Dr. W takes learning very seriously and when that student took out her laptop, she prompted a 20-minute rant about the degradation of our youth and how the use of modern technology in the classroom is the equivalent of an intellectual holocaust.
She almost made that student cry.
It was awesome and I loved every minute of it.
The point was made: no laptops in class.
The rest of class involved 20 students rigorously taking notes on her lecture, afraid of being scolded.
The student who was scolded for taking out her laptop, along with a few other students, dropped the class the next day.
I came back. I was curious and excited.
Her classes instilled in me a love for medieval and British literature. But they were also fun because of her tangents. She always had an opinion on something.
Dr. W had some interesting opinions. During the 2016 presidential election, she told us she always votes for a write-in candidate on her ballot.
Who does she write in?
Queen Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor II.
The Queen of England.
She told us she thought the American government was incompetent and she wanted to, and I quote, “rectify The Declaration of Independence.”
She wanted a “Declaration of Dependence.”
She also believed in magic and fairies.
Well, she didn’t actually believe in fairies, but she said she wasn’t going to rule them out.
She believed in magic, though.
She believed that words have power. This wasn’t a metaphor. She believed that if you spoke certain words with enough candor and emotion, you could change the physical world around you. She said the Vikings did this.
Everyone in my class thought she was crazy.
I loved her.
I’m not trying to say Dr. W was pompous or mean spirited or disrespectful. I don’t think she was being disrespectful when she screamed at that student for taking out her laptop. I think she just really hated laptops. She had taught enough classes to know she needed to set a precedent early.
She wasn’t disrespectful. In fact, she was extremely respectful to her students. When referring to us, she didn’t call us students, she called us scholars. She would say something like, “What do you think of that, scholars?” She treated us like we were part of the conversation, equals, learning something together. She never talked down to us.
A lot of other English majors said they hated Dr. W. I think this was because of how much she cared. Most students took her classes because they were English requirements. But she didn’t treat the classes as a requirement. She treated them as an intellectual journey. She treated us like equals and had high expectations. When these expectations weren’t met, she would be incredibly disappointed.
Despite her deterring a lot of students, I loved her classes. And she liked me for some reason.
What is my greatest piece of writing?
I don’t know.
But I do know Dr. W never told me I was a bad writer.
She told me I was a bad rower compared to the British.
But never a bad writer.
And I thank her for that.
She was a good teacher.