Highlighting Some Issues

(I’m a senior in college meeting with my favorite English professor. She and I are on extremely good terms, as I find her funny and a great teacher, and she gives excellent critiques. I’d made it a point to take every class she offered since I first had her introductory creative writing class.)

Professor: “[My Name], you’ve taken a lot of my courses, right?”

Me: “I’ve taken at least five, I think.”

Professor: “And I can trust you to be honest with me?”

Me: “Absolutely.”

Professor: “Well, you remember the highlighter exercise, right?”

(The “highlighter exercise” is where we had to look at our own work and use colored highlighters to mark where we’ve used bad metaphors, clichés, and overly-flowery language. We always did it after our very first writing assignment in her intro to creative writing course. Usually, the whole page gets covered in highlighter.)

Me: “Yeah?”

Professor: “Well, one of the students started crying during it. I’m kind of worried I’ve scarred her for life.”

Me: “Look, [Professor], I won’t lie; I cried, too. But it also showed me that I still had a long way to go before I could consider myself a real writer. My guess is, she’s like me; she was always told she was an amazing writer by everybody, and thought she’d breeze through your class and you’d sing her praises. Then, she learns the harsh truth: she’s not as good as she thinks she is.”

Professor: “Really?”

Me: “Yep. And this is going to end one of two ways. One: she can’t take the fact that she’s not perfect and quits. Or two: she realizes she’s got a lot to learn, sucks it up, and comes out of this whole thing stronger than before and ready to take the class seriously. That’s what happened to me, and I’m grateful for it.”

Professor: “Aw! Well, I guess a little trauma’s worth it, after all.”

Me: “Just don’t ask me to use a colored highlighter ever again. I can’t stand to even look at those things anymore!”