Dear Composition professor....

To my Composition professor:

Please accept my apologies in advance for being a long-winded writer. I can't help it. It's a disorder I was born with (and I'm pretty sure it's genetic.) I will try my best to abbreviate my writing in an attempt to not cause the look of dread when I hand you a stack of papers.

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Today was the first day of my Composition class. I guess it's pretty obvious by the name that this class is going to require a lot of writing. I'm just hoping I can handle the topics.

In order to know what our class needs to work on, and where to focus the lessons, our professor first needs to know where we're at with our use of grammar, punctuation, and ability to put our thoughts on paper. To answer that question she gave us the last half hour of class to write an essay on "The Best Day of My Life". Someone asked her how long it should be and her reply was, "Just write for the entire half hour."

The moment she announced the topic, thoughts of the day we left for Angela's Make A Wish trip filled my mind.

As I put to ink the emotions of that day, tears threatened to flow down my cheeks. Oh good grief! It was the first day of class, and I was writing a simple essay, and I was flipping CRYING! But I wasn't about to let a few tears stop me. Besides, I figured if I caused my professor to cry while reading my essay then I'd achieved my goal, which is to cause my reader to feel what I'm trying to convey. (and, maybe make it hard to see my grammatical errors through her own tears.)

I finished my essay with just a few minutes to spare. When class was over, we gathered our things, and everyone began dropping their papers on the professor's desk on their way out the door. I noticed that the other students were handing in SINGLE sheets of paper. Some were written on the front and back, while others were just single sided. I looked down at the paperS in my hand, and suddenly felt very self conscious.

When I got to the desk, I asked, "Do you have a stapler?"

"Oh, just make sure your name is on both papers so I know who they belong to."

I looked down at my papers again, then back at the professor. "I'll check my bag to see if I have a stapler."

"How many do you have?" she asked.

"Ummm....let me count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...umm...6."

What the heck? I reminded myself that I'd had the same half hour that everyone else had. I can't help it that I had a really good pen that I love to write with, and that I thought of something right away. I'm sure some of the other students had to think a little bit before they came up with something. I just got lucky this time, and had a thought right away.

Still, even though I didn't really want to make eye contact with her again, I forced myself to look back at the professor, only to find she was staring at me with huge eyes....and blinking kind of a lot.

"I'm sorry. I know. It's a problem I have." And I set the papers on her desk and walked out of the room.

So ends my first day in Composition.