I am a Dork

In a former life, I was a high school English teacher.  A friend just asked me to look over a few of her homeschooled son's essays.  I forgot how much I love to read essays.  It's not the reading of the essay so much actually; it's the comments I get to put on them after I read.

 

I know this photo looks very ominous, with the red pen and all, but I write nice comments too. It was always so disconcerting for my students when they got their first essay of the year back from me.  In their mind they were done.  "Typed, handed in, and I've washed my hands of that thing."  And then I gave their essays back: all covered in red ink and comments, arrows, things crossed out and circles all over the place, smiley faces and question marks.  The faces of my students fell.  "What do you mean we have to write it again?  This WAS my final draft!"  

My younger brother used to ask me for help on his essays.  Eventually he quit because I wanted him to change too many things.  I was making him do too much work.  I can't understand these kind of attitudes.  There is so much pleasure in organizing and refining a piece of writing and seeing the final product come out so much better than it was before.  My husband was telling me about people who were paralyzed with dread about writing a 1 page self review.  Not me! Just look, I can write about myself for pages and pages.  

I guess to some, writing is just as painful as math is to me.  Perhaps they get that same feeling of peace when they look at a word problem that I feel with a red pen and an essay in my hands. I know, I am a dork.  Maybe in my next life I'll be an editor.  Or a writer.  But I better remember how to diagram a sentence first.