Every year at the beginning of the second semester, I send out the same email to the first years. It seems to help. So, if you are a student who has stumbled across this blog, you might appreciate this story. I bet most of your professors have a similar one (and, like me, turned out better for going through it):
"By now, the grades have started to roll in, and you may be less than happy with how things are turning out.
In all honesty, the best thing that ever happened to me during my schooling was after I turned in my first English paper in college. I had never gotten less than an A in anything in my life, I was the “English” guy for the Academic Decathlon Team, I’d won several creative writing contests, and I wanted to major in English. On my first paper, I got a C.
When I went to talk to the professor, a man who wore seersucker suits and looked like a cross between Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders, he said in his genteel Virginia-tidewater accent, “Is English your first language? Your name is Russian. Are you translating as you write?”
The unfortunate thing was that he was genuinely curious and English is my first, and only, language.
As painful as it was at the time, I truly believe that that C made me a better student — I learned from my mistakes, buckled down, and did a lot better in school than I probably would have had I never experienced that setback."
(Alex Ruskell)
