Ann's Story
Beck, Ann

ANN: So I've always been an English nerd and when I was a senior in high school - at my high school if you wanted to take honors English you had to take it from this really mean teacher. She was kind of a dragon-lady and she had this reputation for just chewing up kids and spitting them out. But once the semester got started she quickly saw that I was going to read everything and write everything and do well on my tests so she pulled me aside and I didn't take the tests anymore, in fact she put me at her desk and had me grading the tests or having me doing errands and then she brought in a type writer and she sent me to work typing the tests. So it came time to turn in our first piece of writing and we did. Then on the day when we were getting our essays back, we knew that when she came in the room that we were in big trouble. She had this storm cloud face and she was really mad. She stood up there and just ripped into us about how bad our writing was and some poor, misguided soul raised his hand and said, "But all the things you marked off on my paper are just part of my style." And that really set her off and she lit into him and into us and she said, "You don't have a style, and furthermore you never will have a style. In fact none of you has a style except Ann Lewelling." And that was me and that changed my social life in high school forever because those people still hate me for sure and there went any chance I might have had for being in the homecoming court or even going to the senior prom. But I think that she saw at that time that I would really like writing and I would probably like teaching and she was right. So thank you Miss Harris.