Respect Responsibility Readiness
A community college English teacher tries to impart a life lesson to students who can, but don't, try hard enough.
By Jaime O'Neill May 22, 2011
Dear Students,
I taught my first freshman composition class more than 40 years ago. Your class
is my last. We began the semester with 36 students. I predicted on the first day
that I would probably wind up giving grades to half that many. Had I been more
strict about dropping people whose attendance was erratic and whose assignments
weren't coming in, I would have been right. But I let lots of students slide. I
didn't drop people who weren't showing up, nor did I drop the people who weren't
doing the work. That was no favor because now I'm forced to give grades that
will narrow future options for people who might have gone further, had they only
tried. If you were one of the students who missed more than five or six classes,
or who failed to turn in most of the assignments, you need to ask yourself if
you're making good use of your time. There are always excuses for not showing
up, or not turning work in. I've heard them all. But lives built on excuses
generally don't turn out well.
There were a handful of people in this class who made it here every day, always
with the assigned writing completed. If I were an employer, these are the people
I would want as employees.
But I have never liked to think of myself as working to provide a screening
process for your future bosses. I like to think I'm working for you, and helping
build your futures as more fully realized human beings. In that light, some of
you have failed this semester. You've failed yourselves. As a result, some of
you learned very little and showed no discernible improvement in your writing,
wasting your time and mine.
I never find it pleasant or productive to guilt-trip students. But if just one
of you reads these words and decides to take your education a bit more
seriously, it was worth writing them.
Few people care whether you succeed or fail. You are not showing up to class for
your teachers or even your parents. You're not doing these assignments for
anyone but yourselves. If you cut classes because your teachers bore you, then
you should be dropping those classes, not piddling away your GPA.
I went to a community college too. I screwed up in high school, graduating in
the bottom third of my class. But I married and became a father not long
thereafter. Those responsibilities made me quite serious about the second chance
offered by the community college system. It's difficult to maintain a slacker
attitude when you're up nightly with 2 o'clock feedings of an infant daughter
whose vulnerability and dependence on you are impossible to overlook. Had I not
shown up regularly and done the work conscientiously, I would have blown that
second chance. I would have had a much different life, a much poorer one, not
only materially but intellectually and even spiritually. And my children would
have had poorer lives too, because what I learned in college was shared with
them in ways too numerous to count. I've never regretted the portion of my youth
that I devoted to study.
And I've never regretted spending so much of my adult life teaching in community
colleges. I'm glad I was able to help some of my students get their own second
chances. Most of the people who attend community colleges have very little
handed to them. We are not favored by wealth or connections. Unlike the Donald
Trumps of the world, those born to the mansion, the way is not made easy for us.
So it is something of a crime against our very selves when we squander the
second chance when it is offered.
Some of you did just that this semester, throwing away time and opportunity. If
next semester provides another opportunity, I hope you will seize it. Life has a
way of getting serious with us well before some of us decide to get serious with
it. By that time, it may be too late to build the life you might have wanted.
And if you don't know just what it is you do want, drop out of school until you
figure it out. If you misuse your time here, you will erode the chance you have
for a more hopeful future. In the papers you wrote, I occasionally pointed out
cliches in your prose. In this note to you, however, I have turned myself into a
living cliche, an old teacher scolding the young for lack of seriousness. But
ignore the hectoring of an old man who has traveled the road that lies ahead of
you and you could become your own living cliche — the loser who squandered
opportunity. My hope is that you do not.
Jaime O'Neill is a writer in Northern California.