A Single Compliment

"Like misery itself I was glad at least to have company."

A personal essay by JJ Carter

All it took for me to succeed was for one person to show me that I could.

I hated English classes. That is why I was sitting in the auditorium of a baptist church taking the AP English test with the rest of my class. I wanted to do anything I could to avoid taking at least one English class in college. By the time I was half way through the test I knew I couldn't pass and get college credit. I was nowhere near prepared for this test.

It wasn’t just me though. No one passed. No one was prepared. Like misery itself I was glad at least to have company. Not too long later I went to my first day of college English. It was a sunny September day on the outside, but on the inside my heart rained.
I’d been lamenting my failed attempt to escape this fate since the day I signed up for classes. On my way to the class I had dreaded for years I both worried and hoped that I wouldn’t find the room. It was right where it belonged. Struggling to breathe I entered the windowless classroom and chose a chair at one of the little tables that populated most of the classrooms at the small community college in Oklahoma. I was terrified. My teacher was a small older woman, which was a contrast to my tall high school teacher but I didn’t dare hope that contrast would extend to the overall class experience.

"I was almost in tears, every word agony on the page."

She assigned an essay on the first day and my throat caught, my stomach clenched. Every essay I ever wrote before was barely good enough for me to pass my classes. She said the essay was meant as a diagnostic to see where we were as writers but I felt like I had failed already. I didn’t know how I would survive. When I got home I sat in front of a blank computer screen, staring at my hands, groaning in an almost physical pain, trying to force words to appear in my mind. I didn’t know how to write a paper, my high school teacher was very clear about that. I was almost in tears, every word agony on the page. I wrote one paragraph, then I imitated it, sentence by sentence, changing enough words to change enough meaning for the next part of my poem analysis. I went to bed in a deep depression, knowing that what I had written lacked value. The next day in class my professor approached me, and I almost cried. I told myself she was going to tell me that my paper was worthless and that I needed to take a different class before I could take hers, adding another English class to my studies.

Instead she asked me if she could save that essay and use it as an example of good writing not only that day in class, but also in her future classes. I nodded and grunted “mm-hm,” emotions still choking me too much for me to speak. As far as I knew it was the first paper I’d ever written that was any good.

She taught me a lot that semester. How to write a five paragraph essay. How to do research. To enjoy writing papers. To love English classes. But most importantly she taught me that what I had to say was valuable.

"Even when my writing is weak I almost still enjoy doing it."

I had begun to love English classes. But there was still something at the back of my mind, the voice of my high school teachers whispering that I could not succeed as an English major. It took me years of success based on writing in all my classes for me to finally push past those voices and declare English as my major.

There are days I feel like I’m back in high school English and I wonder if I made a mistake. But then I get to read or write something truly compelling and I remember why I love literature. The whispers are wrong because one person valued my work, and then another, and then another. I don’t always receive high praise, from myself or from others, but even when my writing is weak I still enjoy doing it.

All because one person encouraged me I believed I could do something I thought was impossible. And I will never be the same.