13 Narrative Example

I should’ve failed.

I should’ve failed the course and I should’ve been screwed because it was a pre-requisite for like  everything in my major and there was no reason at all for her to cut me any slack. I’d done the one thing she’d specifically said not to do and that was one hundred percent on me.

I was eighteen and a college freshman, majoring in Criminal Justice. Looking back on that now, I see how dumb a choice that was – the idea of me being a cop is terrifying – but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was taking five courses and four of them weren’t any problem. It was that fifth class that was the issue: Public Speaking.

I hate public speaking. I HATE it. There is nothing in the world that gives me more anxiety than speaking in front of groups of people. Which, as a teacher, is something of a problem but back then the bigger problem was that my anxiety made me make a really, really, really dumb choice.

I skipped speech day.

Not just once. Not twice. Four times. I skipped out on all four speeches we were assigned to give that semester without even emailing the professor to give her some sort of BS excuse; I just didn’t show up at all. She’d told us the very first day of class that the only unforgiveable sin in her class was skipping the speeches. Homework could be handed in late, our one test could be made up if we weren’t happy with our grade, and there would be a few opportunities for extra credit but any missed speeches would be zeros, without exception.

Since the speeches made up eighty percent of the course grade, getting four zeroes equaled out to certain failure. And certain failure meant retaking the course because I needed it to eventually complete my degree. That’s not even taking into consideration that I had an academic scholarship that required me to maintain a 3.0 GPA and an F in that one course might mess that up.

(I don’t know if one F would knock me below 3.0. That’s math and I don’t do math.)

A week before the end of the semester, I went to my professor’s office. I didn’t have much hope that she’d be willing or able to help me but I’d checked the schedule for next semester and hers was the only Public Speaking course I could take. I figured I should at least apologize and try to give some sort of excuse so maybe she wouldn’t prejudge me when I showed up in her class again.

I thought about trying to bullshit her – grandma died or my dog ran away or my girlfriend cheated on me with my brother and I’d been too depressed to come to class – but my paranoia got the better of me. I worried that she’d check up on my excuse and discover that my grandmother was perfectly healthy, I didn’t have a dog or a girlfriend or a brother. So instead, I told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: I freaked out badly and if I’d tried to give a speech I would have puked and then someone in the front row would have been a sympathetic puker and puked too and I’m a sympathetic puker, so I would have puked again and it would have become a never-ending cycle.

Either that or I would have cried in front of everyone.

I told her that I’d prepared for the speeches – I’d even printed them all out just to show her that I hadn’t been trying to be disrespectful – but when the day came, I couldn’t even get out of bed to come to class. I said I was sure she’d heard it all before and I knew I’d messed up but I didn’t want her to think as badly of me as she probably already did. I apologized one last time and told her I’d try to do better next semester.

That should’ve been the end of it. Or, really, it should’ve been the end of it the next semester when I probably still wouldn’t have been able to show up and I’d have flunked the class for a second time.

But, since I said that ‘should’ve’ been the end of it, you can probably guess that it wasn’t. She stopped me before I left her office and asked to look at my speeches. I sat there for five minutes while she looked over what I’d written and then she made me an offer. A one-time, take it or leave it, have to do it now offer: give my speeches to her, right there in the office and if they were good enough, she’d give me just enough credit to pass.

And that’s what I did.

I’m not gonna lie to you: I still almost puked. I was shaking by the time I finished the last speech and I know I would’ve lost all kinds of points for not making any sort of eye contact with my audience, but I finished them all. True to her word, she went right into her gradebook and entered a “D” on the final grade line. I passed and even though it damaged my GPA (and my parents were pissed) none of that mattered. I was done with Public Speaking.

At least until I became a teacher, but that’s an entirely different story.

I’ve never forgotten what she did for me; I can still remember exactly how I felt when I walked out of her office that day. She didn’t have to be that kind or take that much pity on me and I’ve had a lot of professors since – and worked with a few, too – who wouldn’t have done it. The rules are the rules, they’d say, and if you can’t follow the rules in a class, how will you ever succeed in the real world?

If she’d been one of those professors, I might not have made it through. I honestly don’t know if I ever would have been able to pass that class or what the permanent damage would have been to my long-term goals. But something she said stuck with me. The rules, she said, are there for a reason but that reason should be to guide and help, not to punish or ruin. It wasn’t her job, she told me, to weed out those who couldn’t cut it. It was her job to give us all every chance to cut it.

I eventually graduated – six years, a different college, and three majors later – and then found my way to a career that forces me to spend every day doing the one thing I tried so hard not to do in her class. And whenever a student or one of those professors asks why I give so many chances, why I don’t penalize late work,  why I try so hard to help every student to make it through, I remember her and her offer and those awful speeches I stumbled my way through.

And then I just tell people. I’m just doing what I was taught.