This is a reflective essay I had to write for my English 105 class. Last 105 class was today, and I must admit, I’m kind of sad about it. Really loved that class, and Rachel, my instructor, was fantastic. Favorite teacher this semester. Really am going to miss her a lot.

Anyway, I whipped this up in about 30 minutes. It’s amazing what emotions do to your writing skills. I’m posting this hoping maybe it will help people who are on the fence about college, as I once was. Please let me know what you think.

Not So Scary

I’m nervous. It’s officially my first day of college, and I am nervous. I had just been let out of my first lecture – Psychology 101, which had 400+ students – and it’s getting close to be time for my next class, English 105. Much to my confusion this English class was in an elementary school. Did I get put into developmental English? Is there something wrong with my SAT or AIMS scores? I thought I got exceptional scores… why is this class at an elementary school? Is this class going to be like Psychology, with hundreds of students? How on Earth does one instructor teach English to a hundred students? No use worrying about it; I had to go.

Even on the first day, parking at NAU has been a pain. Never enough parking meters, and when there are meters, they never allow more than one and a half hours – not nearly enough for some classes. All the parking passes for my side of campus are sold out. I live off campus to boot, so I can’t just walk to class without leaving an hour early. Screw it. I’ll park in teacher parking. That I did. I parked right up front, right next to the school, and right next to the big sign saying “AE Permits Only”. Fortunately, I did not receive a ticket this time, but the relationship between me and parking tickets is a whole different story. I walked into the elementary school, still unsure of why my college-level English class is in an elementary school. Room 106. That was my destination. I find it, walk in, and notice that it’s just a computer lab. It’s a very standard, academic-looking computer lab, each desk with a couple Dell Optiplex desktop PCs sitting on it, with cables neatly bound by zipties behind them. This is room 106… but am I really in the right place? There are not very many people here, at least not compared to my Psychology lecture. I sit down at an empty computer surrounded by other empty computers – I did not want to draw attention, especially if I am, in fact, in the wrong place. The room starts to fill up, and I notice there are two instructors. What kind of class has two instructors?! A male and a female instructor, both young, both with a very ‘English Instructor’ look about them, an intelligent look, and they both appear to be… approachable; friendly. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. Truthfully, I was expecting an old, grey-haired lady with thick-lensed glasses and smelled of a strange ointment. After all, that’s the stereotypical English professor, right?  Maybe this won’t be so bad.

Class seems to be starting, and the male instructor, whose name I don’t know at this point, starts handing out sheets of paper. Sheets of questions to ask fellow classmates, ie ‘Can you find anybody who has a tattoo?’ I realize that they’re actually encouraging us to get to know each other, to socialize with our classmates. Not something I expected from a college course. The whole classroom was up and about, asking everyone these silly questions, and you know what? It worked. It broke the ice between us students, and it really calmed my nerves. Yeah, maybe I CAN handle this college thing. Now the only ice left to break is between the instructors and me.

Weeks later, and we are assigned to read a snippet of Stephen King’s book On Writing. Naturally, being the procrastinator I am, I print it out and read it an hour before I left for class. It’s an enjoyable piece of work, no doubt, just perhaps a little too long for my tastes. Oh well, I have to do what I have to do. I head to class, this time parking at a parking meter, and walk once again into the computer lab and sit down. At this point I’ve grown really fond of this class. I enjoy its small size, there are not much more than 20 students in my section, and I just find it to be one of my more enjoyable classes. By this time, I’ve learned what the deal is with the two instructors: Mark is the instructor of one section, with whom we share the computer lab with on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Rachel is the instructor of my section, section 39, and we get an empty classroom on Mondays and Wednesdays. Confusing as hell? A little bit. Scuttlebutt is that the English building is being renovated, and this is the best they can do. No worries. I got this down.

Room 106 is dark this day, all the lights are out, however the computers are all on so it can’t be a power issue. The room is illuminated with a faint blue glow of all the computer screens, most of which are on the NAU login screen, which is, of course, blue. The room is very blue. I feel as if I should be depressed or something considering how blue the room is. I sit down, and wait for class to start, still confused as to why the lights are off. Rachel, my instructor, walks into the classroom, a few minutes late as always, and it’s revealed that we are going to watch, or rather, listen to a video of Stephen King reading his Pie Eating Contest story. The video starts, and the classroom falls silent. Stephen King is reading his delightfully lighthearted and gross story, which involves a boy and his rival in a pie-eating contest, and how the boy manages to ‘win’ against him: by chugging ungodly amounts of castor oil before eating ungodly amounts of pie, and vomiting all over the rival, which starts a chain reaction of human emesis until the entire scene is just covered in vomit. It was at this point, when we were listening to Stephen King telling his funny yet disgusting story, that I noticed both Mark and Rachel laughing along with us. It doesn’t seem like much, but it made me realize something. They weren’t these mean, nasty teachers like we’re always led to expect. They didn’t hate us and just want us gone. No, they were human beings just like the rest of us, and they may very well actually give a shit about us, unlike most college professors lecturing classes of 100+ students multiple times a day; they don’t have the capacity to give a shit about that many people. Of course they care about us. Otherwise I would be stuck in a classroom with 100 other people, like the rest of my classes.

It wouldn’t be a class size of barely over 20 students if they didn’t care about us. We wouldn’t have so much interaction with the instructor if they didn’t care. Our grades wouldn’t take so long to be posted if they didn’t care – as that means they’re actually reading your paper in its entirety, and not just skimming over it like any other teacher would. Hell, even my elementary school English teachers barely read my papers. I wouldn’t have learned so much from this class if the instructors didn’t interact so much with us, and had us so engaged in the coursework. I can’t speak much for Mark, as we share him only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it seems to me that Rachel actually cares about us, her students. And if she doesn’t, she does a hell of a good job at pretending. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

That’s all it took for me. I just needed a college instructor to act like they cared about me, about their class as a whole, to make me realize something: You know, maybe college isn’t so scary after all.