You'll Thank Me One Day

Prompt 4: Describe a time you gave a teacher a hard time...

Check out this week's other participants here.

English was always my best subject. It was easy for me. All through school, I had never gotten anything less than an A on my papers. It didn't matter what the topic was. I could always research and write the hell out of anything.

All that changed junior year in high school. I let my mother talk me into going into Honors English. It was culture shock.

My professor was from Chicago but fancied herself a real Englishwoman. She spoke in a British accent. And she was obsessed with all things England. (She also seemed to believe she was a fashion model, despite her truly bizarre taste in clothing). "I'm not like your other English teachers," she told us. "You probably won't like me. But if you listen, you'll be a better writer. And in a couple years from now, when you ace your freshman year writing course in college, you'll come back here over break and thank me."

When the time came to turn in our first assignment, I did so with my typical air of total confidence and arrogance. After all, I had never written a bad essay. Why shouldn't I be a bit cocky? I got the paper back the next day. It was COVERED in red ink. And the grade on the bottom? She gave me a freaking C. Gave it to me because I didn't earn Cs in English.

I stared at the paper in utter disbelief. I waited for the rest of the class to leave. And then I turned my fury on her. I yelled. I called her the worst excuse for an English teacher in the world. Who did she think she was giving me a C?

To her credit, she listened with patience I didn't know existed. Then she calmly spoke, "Jaime. Do you remember when I told the class there was always one student who hated me and didn't want to listen to my criticism? I had hoped it wouldn't be you."

Later that night as I wrote my next assignment, anger was replaced with an "I'll show her" attitude. I poured everything I had into that paper for hours. She would have to give me an A this time. She didn't. Less red ink. But only a B. Eventually, she did give me those As. Consistently. I became one of her best students. She became one of my favorite professors.

I went off to college and aced my freshman writing course. Exactly as she predicted, I went back to my high school over break and came to her classroom. She was terrorizing a new crop of students with the same old material.

After the bell rang, I got to talk to her for a few minutes. It went a little something like this: "I was so angry with you when you gave me a C on my first paper. You said if I listened to you, it'd make me a better writer and one day I'd thank you for being so hard on me. You were right. Thank you."

It was the first time I ever saw her speechless.