The Rejection Letter

I should entitle this "No Rejection Letter." Lots of thought went into my decision to write some books specifically aimed at self-publishing.  Mainly, I'm not happy about how publishing houses treat authors.  It's simple, really.  In this day and age, when a rejection letter can be sent with an email address and the push of a button more and more houses are saying, "Due to high volume we no longer send rejection letters.  If we are interested in your work we will contact you.  If you don't hear from us in (3 months, 6 months, a year) please feel free to submit your work elsewhere." They add insult to injury with the statement, "If your work is accepted elsewhere we request the courtesy of letting us know." Courtesy?

First, without writers there are no publishing houses.  Second, I don't have any more time than you do so if you can't give me the courtesy of a rejection I hardly think you need to know if someone else accepts my work for publication.  Third, if you are so outmoded that you don't make use of form letters and email accounts, which cost you absolutely nothing and take only a second to utilize, I'm not sure you are worth dealing with anyway.

Self-publication isn't new.  Writers use to take their stories to the local paper and have them published.  Sometimes they had to pay something to do it.  When people liked what they read they asked for more and the paper would, in turn, offer to pay something to the writer to provide more of their work.  But publishing houses had contacts, had longer reach, eventually had financial resources the writer didn't and so they became a better way for the writer to get their work to the public -- until they started thinking that writers couldn't live without them. 

Welcome to the age of the Internet.  While publishing houses started looking for the sure bet and only accepted agented work; while the entire institution of publishing became more and more conservative; while people like Stephen King and J K Rowling spent time and money being rejected for years, writers gained direct access to the public. 

I don't enjoy reading poorly crafted plot lines and books full of misspellings and incorrect grammar.  I get shocked when Writer's Digest lists their criteria for entering a contest and it includes "no handwritten manuscripts." That being said, I read copiously based on the fact that, as Stephen King says, "Reading is the apprenticeship to writing." And I have to say, there are publishing houses that release books with poorly crafted plot lines, misspellings and incorrect grammar.  I know; I'm reading one right now.  As a matter of fact I'm half way through a book written by a New York Times Best Selling Author and even though I'm half-way through the only thing I've read so far is the back story from the five books previously published.  It's so boring I keep putting it down and coming back to it when my stomach stops churning.  If there is a story in this book I haven't found it yet.  Some agent or publisher should have told the author to get a new story line or just forget it. They didn't, of course.  They figured that they could put "Author of ..............New York Times Bestseller List," and the book would sell itself, garbage or not; that's how they got me to read it.  Meanwhile, there are good stories by good writers being passed over because they aren't a sure thing -- no one knows their name.

I wrote a middle-grade-coming-of-age novel about a boy who is called Chunkie Two Boys by bullies at school.  As it turns out, Charlie (aka Chunkie) has to buddy up with his enemies when they are accused of attacking Mr. Scrod based on the simple fact that they are "city kids." Charlie realizes eventually that "everyone seems to hate someone," and he solves the mystery of exactly who hit Mr. Scrod, which not only clears his name  but also makes him a hero. Two well published authors, one being a field agent for a major publishing house, gave it a thumbs up and had me send it to their personal contacts at specific publishing houses.  The same book was revised multiple times under the tutelage of several professors who are also well published and who all agreed that it's a good book and ready to go.  I have submitted it to ten houses; I have one rejection letter and that is from an agent who asked to see my next book because she "likes the way I write."

Ten places are not that many to reject a manuscript.  I should and will continue to put it out there, read it for things to tweak. revise if I find something that could be bigger, better or stronger, and continue to find it a good home.  But I'm pretty upset about the lack of rejection letters.  I'm insulted and pissed off.  Every time I send out a letter, synopsis, outline and three chapters it costs me a respectable amount of time and money.  I deserve a rejection letter.  I deserve to have an end to the hope that pops up with every unknown phone number on my cell phone and every large envelope that arrives in the mail.  I deserve an email that says, "Thanks but no thanks." My time and effort is worth that much. It's just plain good business.

So, I have done a ton of research, talked to a lot of people, read great and horrible literature and come up with what I think will sell to the thousands of readers who are skimming titles on Amazon and Kindle.  These aren't books thought up with self-publishing in mind; they are books I was going to write anyway but which I know are commercial in a way my non-fiction children works series won't be.  These are books for the person who wants a fun read full of excitement and romance and fresh ideas. They are books people will find when they type in "romance" or "paranormal" or "ghost" or "women."

I've done the same careful research, have a professional editor, a graphic designer, and a well educated, in some cases published, group of readers.  I still draft, revise, edit and revise again and again -- and I'll be thrilled if I can eventually say to an agent or publishing house, "I am the author of these books and here is my readership and here are the reviews; I believe this is the type of book you are looking for and I have proof that people like what I write."

Self-publishing isn't easy.  People scoff and act like every yahoo who imagines they can write is simply throwing a Word manuscript at Kindle and -- voila! -- they dream of sitting back and letting the money roll in.  Maybe that's true of some; I don't know.  I know it took me a week to get my book formatted to look good and meet the requirements.  I know I'll probably borrow the money to have Create Space upload it to Kindle for me.  I know I've given very careful thought to the cover, gotten feed back from trusted colleagues every step of the way and that I have already made marketing plans for getting it out there.  I also know I would love it if someone else did all of that for me.  And I'm not expecting to get rich.  I want a little bit of money to come in which will buy me time to write other books and submit them to agents and publishers, hopefully along with a little bit of success I can wave around as collateral.  You see, I don't have the benefit of another job.  I don't have six months or six years to wait.  But more than that, I believe in myself and my work.  I'm good at this. 

Mainly, I don't like the way publishing houses do business.  I don't like the death of the rejection letter or the months and years it takes just to get something read.  I don't like it at all.  I've led a different kind of life -- taking chances, betting with my heart, following a different path.  This is just more of the same.  By the way, Waking Up Dead  is a good book.  You'll be able to get it from the Kindle free library for 90 days.  Give it a read; you might even be moved to write a review.  If you think it's garbage, say so.  If you like it please say that, too.  I'm always up for constructive criticism. 

One final note: my fellow writers are pretty much disapproving of my decision to self-publish.  I hope they're wrong.  I accept, support and respect the choices they make; hopefully they will do the same for me.

Why I've Decided to Write Ghost Stories

When I was a little girl my sisters and I would tell ghost stories; not just the sit-around-the-campfire stories everyone hears but other stories -- our own.  Maybe that was foreshadowing of sorts.  Strange things can happen in families and they certainly did in mine.

My mother was a seer of sorts.  She never told me about ghosts but she had a freaky way of knowing things before they happened.  The time I remember most vividly was the day my brother had gone deer hunting with one of our neighbors.  My mother was hanging out clothes that afternoon and I was helping.  All of  sudden she became completely still and turned to stare at the mountain behind her.  "Something is wrong," she said. 

We had a 10 party line back then; 10 families shared one phone line.  If you wantd to make a call you picked up the receiver and hung up if someone else was talking on the phone.  That day she picked up the receiver and heard a man saying, "Some kid is in the woods with his leg shot off." 

She didn't even wait to find out what kid or who was talking.  She simply got her coat and boots on and waved down the ambulance as it went by the house. "I'm going with you.  He's my son."

My brother had gone after a large buck with a big rack, tripped over some barbed-wire fence, and discharged his shotgun at close range.  His lower leg was shattered.  At the age of 14 he had the presence of mind to strip off his coat, remove his undershirt and put on his own tourniquet. There he was, alone and wounded, in a forest on the mountain.

The farmer who had taken my brother hunting had left him in the woods and gone home to do chores.  Whether he thought Lewie was going home or continuing to hunt I guess I never knew.  That part doesn't really matter, I suppose.  What does matter is that the farmer came out of the barn and saw what every hunter hopes to see -- a large buck with a huge rack standing at the bottom of the field looking at him.  The deer was just out of range.  The farmer grabbed his rifle and took off after the deer.

Every time the farmer had the deer in range and stopped to take a shot, the deer would move.  As soon as it was out of range it would stop again and watch the farmer approach.  This happened repeatedly, the deer always moving just out of range and then stopping as if waiting for the farmer.  The deer led the farmer to my brother and then disappeared.  The farmer swore, over and over for year to come, that the deer had taken him to Lewie on purpose. Some of us believe it was the buck Lewie had been chasing in the first place who saw the child in need of help and went to get it. Without intervention there is no doubt my brother would have either bled to death or frozen to death.

Between the story of the deer and my mother's uncanny way of knowing when things were wrong I knew at an early age that I believed in things that couldn't be seen.  I was disappointed to realize that I wasn't born with any talent in that direction myself; however, I have a sister who attracts premonitions and spirits to the point that she has to work to block them.  It was through her that I found out my mother could sense more than events.  At some point when my mother realized that Faye had inherited this skill or curse, depending on your point of view, she had reassured Faye that the ghosts were real even if other people couldn't see or hear them. "Places aren't haunted; people are," she told her. 

And that seems to be true. I never had a real encounter with a ghost until recently and that was when I was researching a book I'm writing called The Haunting of Waterford Road.  My sister had told me that a spirit pounds on the cellar door.  I was standing right next to the door one day when it was struck by someone or something hard enough to make me jump.  I'm not talking about a tap or a moment when you think you might have heard something; I'm talking about a good, solid bang like a fist on the door.  As I jumped back, startled, Faye laughed.  "That's my ghost," she said and immediately opened the door to show me that no one and nothing was there.  "I don't think he wants to hurt anyone.  He's just angry." 

I think that writing about ghosts draws them to you.  I heard a CSI investigator who did paranormal research say the same thing in a presentation.  My brother-in-law says it's just a matter of being aware.  More and more I think he's right.  He never gave much thought to ghosts until he waved at his young daughter and her friend who were walking up the road to meet him.  When the little girl go to him she was alone. "Where's your friend?" he asked.  Kassie assured him that no one was nor had been with her.  The ghost child is more easily seen than the angry man in the cellar.  She has been seen not only walking up the road but also crouching under the dining room table and walking up the steps to the bedrooms.  I haven't seen her myself although I would like to but three people have. 

If you announce in a crowded room that you are collecting people's ghost stories you always have a few individuals pull you aside before they leave and say, "I don't know if you're interested, but ...." Some of those stories don't ring true; some are "a feeling" or a story that is a third, fourth or fifth person narrative. You know those stories, the ones Aunt Jane told Mom who told Sister Sally who told me.  But there are other stories that are clear and sure: the deceased mother-in-law who insisted her daughter-in-law look at the family album for no apparent reason until she finally found her deceased father-in-law's military discharge and purple heart citation tucked inside the binding, the elderly gentleman who sits rocking in his favorite chair on the porch visible enough for a boy to ask who he is, the doors that won't open or keep opening, the adult children who each had a visit from their deceased mother the week before their father passed away, and more and more and more.

My goal is to write four books this year.  Waking Up Dead is about a woman who doesn't know she's dead and who, when she finds out why everything is so out of whack, goes about the business of deciding how to live after death.  The second book (hopefully) is about Johnny (non-titled at this time) who died in a house fire he accidentally set with matches.  When other children move into the house he now lives in he doesn't want them to leave him -- it gets so lonely -- and so he works on getting them to start a fire, too.  Third, The Haunting of Waterford Road; the story of a family haunted by and then saved by the ghosts who live in their farm house.  The fourth planned book is a collection of ghost stories which I have been collecting as my research for the first three books.  They are all first hand accounts and based in the Endless Mountains.  Maybe we just have more ghosts than other places?  Who knows. 

Teaching

At one point in life I ran from my position as a Disability Advocate because the burden of responsibility overwhelmed me.  Every time I lost a case I felt like a failure.  People looked for me to save them, to change their lives, to make something positive out of one kind of catastrophy or another.  It was too much.  I fell into my books and swore I'd never be responsible for someone else's survival again.  I was wrong.

Most MFA in English graduates eventually look to teaching as a way to shore up their income while developing as a writer, and most first time English Instructors are given Developmental Writing classes to teach.   For me, it was a matter of once again shouldering the great cloak of responsibility for someone's surival.  Developmental Writing students didn't or couldn't pass the essay assessment for college level writing and pay full price to take a class which gives them no college credits and which they must pass in order to move on to College Composition, which is a requirement for any individual obtaining an Associates Degree.  Developmental Writing covers the most basic building blocks of writing -- sentences, paragraphs and essays laid out in a logical sequence using grammar correct enough to not detract the reader from the meaning of the writing.  It's what every student should have learned in high school, but many didn't.

My class was made up of working adults trying to support families while going to school, housewives trying to take classes during or after raising children and caring for homes, and men and women who had completed military service and were now looking to complete their education.  Many of them had been laid off of jobs and were looking for careers.  Over half had been born in another country or been raised by parents born in another country and not fluent in English.  Others might as well have been born in another country since their language was an urban vernacular that blended street talk, English and idioms from multiple populations of diverse languages.  All of them were giving up three hours on Thursday night plus multiple hours studying during the week to learn in 15 weeks what they hadn't learned in 20 to 45 years; all of them were driven by a firm resolve to succeed. 

Four members of my class were well spoken professionals who fell apart every time I said the words quizz, exam or test.  It wasn't hard to figure out what had happened when they wrote their assessment essays in the first place.  One had had a nervous break down when he tried to go to college the first time -- something he confided in me one night after class when I was trying to drill home the basics of a paragraph outline and he broke down.  Another student, a lovely French speaking woman who had raised her family while her husband obtained his PhD, confided in me that her husband had laughed at her when she enrolled in the class, saying, "What are you doing that for?  You know you can't pass." 

There were stories -- heartrending stories -- that came to me in written form, bared in simple paragraphs and essays while each individual struggled to remember what verbs and subjects are and how to stay in one tense.  And they were my peers -- people who worked everyday in responsible positions.  Professions represented: housewife, pre-school teacher and vocalist, electrician, army sharp-shooter, police officer, surgical technician,  loan officer, elementary school developmental aide, physical fitness instructor, plumber, and two gentlemen who had worked in some type of technical field and been laid off.  One of those was from India and had completed college there but needed an American degree and the other was a brilliant man from Albania who had spent years as an illegal alien before obtaining his US citizenship.  The student from Albania could speak five languages.     

Countries represented: India, Africa, Jamaica, Albania, Trinidad, Harlem and Philidelphia.  If you don't think Harlem and Philidelphia should be in the list, spend some time helping students struggle with English and you'll change your mind.  Some individuals from various parts of our cities speak a very different form of English and struggle when they attend college.  That conversation, the one about our schools and what they teach, or rather, don't teach, is for a different post. 

The barriers my students had to overcome were humbling.  I received essays about illegal immigration, alcoholic parents, parents who were imprisoned for drug abuse and physical abuse of their children, teenage pregnancy, cancer survival, controlling husbands, and clinical anxiety.  But I also received essays about faith and family, wisdom obtained through maturity, and great determination.  If I were a psychology major it would have been a fantastic study in the resilience of human nature.  As an English major, it was overwhelming.  I am thankful for all those years working in disability and welfare.  I was at least somewhat prepared to balance multiple backgrounds and experiences and to give much deserved respect to the students who were so honest and forthcoming. 

So, back to the topic of feeling responsible.  As each student put their life story on paper and spoke to me in private, I felt that mantle of despair falling like lead on my shoulders.  It was up to me to give them the tools to succeed.  They were willing to do their part; I was obligated to do mine.  Fifteen three hour sessions hardly seemed like enough time to provide so much knowledge, no matter how dedicated the individuals in my class were. 

As a teacher, I faced a different type of barrier.  Like many writers, I had never had to work at the English language.  It came naturally to me, like drinking water or eating food.  Before I ever went to school I was reading Longfellow, Wadsworth, Whitman, and many more of the great writers. In junior high school I hid Shakespeare behind my text book during history class like other kids hid comic books.  My first poem was published when I was 10 years old.  It is very difficult to explain something you've never gone through the process of learning.  I, too, had to study for Developmental Writing, only I was studying methods of defining verbs, subjects, pronouns, punctuation and tenses.  I learn in huge blocks, not in individual bricks.  When I was in school, teachers would lecture and and on and I would be waiting for the punch line; until I had the whole picture nothing made sense.  Now, as the instructor for Developmental Writing, I had to break everything down into little, tiny steps and help students build, one brick at a time.  For me, it was a new way of thinking.

I am a firm believer in learning by doing.  I believe that people learn through sight, sound and muscle memory, so everything has to be seen, heard and done.  We always started with grammar.  I would assign a reading on nouns, review the information in class and have them do the exercises in their workbooks in a round-robin style in the classroom.  What I found out is that reading about nouns, if you don't know anything about them in the first place, doesn't seem to help.  The same goes for placing commas, beginning and ending quotes with quotation marks and staying on subject when you write.  My plan to break class into one hour of grammar review, one hour of paragraph discussion and one hour of writing fell apart.  I had no idea that the simple sentence is the hardest concept to learn for people who have been speaking but not reading for a lifetime.  Class changed.  I, the instructor who had promised at the beginning of the semester not to lecture, lectured.  I wrote on the board, starting with the most simple sentences possible, and we identified a subject and a verb.  As soon as a phrase that also had a subject was introduced, half the class honestly couldn't answer when I asked who or what we were talking about.  We were one third of the way through the semester when I gave a grammar test and 50% of the class failed it.  That was my darkest hour.  I was sure that I couldn't teach in any way that would be affective.  I informed my class that we were going to spend a lot more time on grammar and started from scratch.

Another thing I learned was that, even in this day and age of technology, very few people in the class knew how to use a computer to write.  Even those who were computer savvy didn't know how to format a paragraph in wordprocessing.  Many did not have computers of their own.  The first writing assignments were often handwritten and on one occassion I received a paragraph that had been written on a cell phone and texted.  For that reason nearly half of our scheduled classes were held in the computer lab. 

I rearranged my thinking on class organization.  We wrote first, I reviewed and commented on their work, and then we reviewed the writings together, going over each grammatical error as a group.  As the class worked together, they started really talking about the errors, challenging my revision suggestions and asking more questions about similar sentences.  I had to be careful about how much was revealed because as the students got to know me they started writing those wonderful, painful, personal paragraphs and essays.  Often I would ask permission to share a sentence because it was so perfectly expressed, and often I would warn a student that I was going to use something they had written as an example of what not to do.  That system, the forewarnng system, broke down a lot of barriers.  As I introduced the idea of workshopping and peer review, they were willing to share their work with each other because the idea had already been implemented.  By the end of the semester the students were turning to each other spontaneously to ask opinions and share ideas.  I believe that sense of being "in it together" and supporting each other made a huge difference.

As the semester drew to a close I panicked.  I was convinced that each person had given 100% and that I, being new and still struggling with strategies, had let them down.  In one class as I, once again, pointed out the lack of articles (a, an, the) in a piece written by the man from India, he threw his pencil at his book.  The teacher/singer started coming to class with such a quiet, sad attitude that I asked what was wrong, at which point she spouted, "I hate this class!  I hate it!  I cry all the way here!"  We went through her completed paragraphs so I could show her how much progress she had made and assure her that she was succeeding.  We did get past the class drop deadline without her quitting, but just barely. 

What I couldn't share was that I, too, was in a panic.  The average success rate in Developmental Writing is 50% and I knew I couldn't accept that result for this wonderful, handworking group of students.  There wasn't one person in the class that didn't have something huge at stake in their own mind, including the high cost of the class and books.  I tried to take an objective look at the work that had been done so far and at the essential mile stones required.  That led to one of the hardest conversations I had to have all semestser.  I had to let the gentleman from India know that he could, but most likely wouldn't, pass the class.  He just didn't have enough understanding of the English language.  We talked about ESL (English as a Second Language) and he told me that his wife was in an ESL class and when he saw the material it was so simple he thought it was a waste of time.  I showed him the college ESL books and his eyes widened.  "Yes, that would help," he said.  His understanding of paragraph and essay organization was perfect and I told him that.  I suggested he take the ESL class and then request to be retested for Composition rather than go through Developmental Writing again.  I was relieved when he seemed to accept what I was telling him.

For all of the students, I started arriving earlier and earlier, and staying later and later.  Security guards and cleaning people developed the habit of stopping by to see if I was alright and to ask when we would be done.  An hour before class time students would start arriving in the room and at the end of every class students lined up to ask questions.  Our three hour class became a five hour class and then some.  Paragraphs and essays were written and revised and written and revised and written again. 

Because I was a new teacher, the Assistant Dean periodically reviewed the student portfolios.  Approximately three quarters of the way through the semester she asked, "How do you know they are writing these?  Some sound like they could be copied from something."  I assured her that, for the most part, the writing was being done in class, but I knew that if all or most of my students passed they would be under scrutiny and so I built what I hoped was a fool-proof plan to verify each written piece was an original. 

First, each student wrote an essay, built around a paragraph they had submitted earlier and chosen by me.  They worked the first draft together, following an outline I had provided.  They rewrote the essays according to what had been discussed in class and turned them in.  I made revision suggestions and had them rewrite them again until every student at turned in a credible essay. 

In the next to the last class we met in the computer lab and I had every student free-write an essay on a topic I chose.  I was surprised and dismayed to find out that four of them caved under the pressure.  One of the best writers in class sat at the computer and cried -- she couldn't write spontaneously.  Two others couldn't write with any noise in the room, and one had to hand write her outline before she could type.  She didn't finish the essay.  The Indian gentleman simply sat there until I asked him questions that served as prompts.  I was more worried than ever about their ability to write an essay in class that was indicative of what they had learned throughout the semester. 

The last day of class is often a general rehashing of the semester and carries an easy work load.  My students didn't have that luxury.  I was determined they would be prepared for the final exam -- a full essay, written in the computer lab without the benefit of discussion or revision.  I handed out a list of five topics to choose from for their final and gave them the class period to write their outline.  They had to finish the full outline, take home a copy to help them prepare for the exam and give me a copy.  For the final, they were allowed to use the outline as given to me that day and grammer worksheets we had covered in class.  There could be no extra notes and no extra books on their desks.  I hoped with all my heart that having a week to think about what they were going to write would remove the stress related to free-writing and exams in general.  I also needed proof that they had formulated the essays themselves.

What I wear to teach has laughingly been callled my uniform.  My students, particularly the African- American ladies, had had a great deal of fun at my expense talking about my limited fashion sense.  Every class day I appeared in jeans, a turtleneck and a blazer, all in muted tones of navy and brown.  One student went as far as to comment that she would hate to have my wardrobe.  Since two of my strongest fashion critics also happened to suffer from exam anxiety, I decided to help break the tension by providing a diversion.  I showed up for the final in a red dress and pumps, with my hair styled and my finger nails polished.  It worked.  As the students arrived in the computer room they laughed, commented, complimented, and in a couple of instances even applauded.  My unexpected appearance was a perfect stress reliever.  Even the men made a point of saying how nice I looked.

If I ever decide teaching is the wrong road for me I might take up relationship building.  As students finished their essays and left, they hugged, shook hands, took contact information. It was amazing to me to hear them express such warmth and appreciation of each other.  Several stated that they would miss this class.  As they left I felt, even more accutely, the burden of helping them move on through a successful final exam.  Did I fail?  How many would be notified that they hadn't made the cut and so could not move on?  When the last paper was turned in and I gathered the files I felt physically drained and a little ill. 

I couldn't sleep that night.  It was too late to grade papers and I was too emotionally charged to be objective.  I finally put myself to sleep after midnight with a healthy dose of brandy and NCIS.  I was back up at the crack of dawn and on my way to the faculty resource room where I would grade the essays, have them reviewed by the Assistant Dean, and enter final grades on the omputer system. 

The essays were surprising good.  Some were so good, as a matter of fact, that the Assistant Dean looked up at one point and asked, "And you're absolutely sure they wrote these themselves?  There was no way to cheat?" 

"No way,"  I told her with absolute confidence.  I outlined the process with her and she agreed that they had to have been written by the students.

There were funny errors -- a sudden move to past perfect by a student who struggled with tenses, a couple of run-on sentences from another student who had struggled with fragments and articles placed in front of every noun, whether it was needed or not, by the man from India.  And there were essays that brought tears from the woman whose husband had told her she couldn't pass the class and the man from Albania.  Beautiful, heart felt essays written in correct form and order, one after the other, making me proud, relieved, humble and happy. 

I started out with nineteen students.  Three withdrew without ever coming to class, three tested out and moved up to Composiiton at the beginning of the term, two were withdrawn by me for missing too many classes, and that left twenlve.   Out of those twelve, eleven passed.  Two finished with High Pass, indicating their work was above and beyond what was required. The Assistant Dean and two other more experienced English instructors debated about the essay by the student from India and finally determined that he had to be recommended for an ESL class.  I am happy to say that that decision wasn't unanimous.  I was present when one of the instructors argued that he had met the requirements and should be allowed to move up.  The Assistant Dean insisted, probably correctly, that to pass him at this level without an ESL class was setting him up for failure in Composition I. 

As I entered their final grades on the computer, I envisioned every face, every sigh of relief, every exclamation of excitement. By the time I left Delaware County Community College and headed home I was jubilant.  I was a teacher!  I was successful!  That final exam was a test for me as much as it was a test for the students taking it.  The burden that I had been carrying fell from my shoulders with a nearly audible "thunk."  I was validated.  I wasn't a failure. Most importantly, I hadn't let those wonderful people down -- the ones who had put their trust in me to teach them what they needed to know.

I will teach other classes.  I will have students who don't care, who don't try, who don't throw everything into their work and who choose not to learn.  This group of people who came together in my classroom was a blessing.  As much as they were afraid they couldn't learn and were determined they would, I was afraid I couldn't teach and determined I would.  We helped each other move on.  When they passed, I passed.  We rejoiced together.  I will be forever grateful.