English-111-Mr. Gasparo- Are you willing to do the work?

I walk into a class room with thirty old style school desk-chairs lined in rows and along the wall. As I look around to find the safest seat in the room, I notice young college students that are my new classmates. That is if I’m in the right classroom this time. I find a desk up against the wall, not too close to the teacher, not too far from the door and not in the middle of all the young college students. As I sit at the desk in the safe location, I began to ponder to myself what in the world was I thinking when I decided to attend college for the first time twenty years after high school? I graduated in 1989 from a small private school in Holly Hill Florida where my graduating class was a whopping total of ten. That’s a big difference from this TCC campus that I am now attending. I noticed one of the young students messing around with things on the teacher’s desk. I became perplexed as he began addressing the class. I kept waiting for this practical joker to take his seat because surely our teacher will be here any minute. I soon realized that this was not a young college student trying to be funny; this young man was indeed my teacher, Mr. Gasparo.


As Mr. Gasparo began telling the class everything that was expected from us as students and all the writing that we would be doing, I wondered if I had the ability to do this course. I began thinking about the academic disadvantages that I had going to that small private school where I never had to write a term paper. Not to mention I have dyslexia. Everyone knows that people with dyslexia are horrible spellers. And you have to spell to write a paper. The only thing I did not question was that this course was going to be a lot of work. That wasn’t just a feeling that I got from Mr. Gasparo, it was all in black and white laying on the desk in front of me. He had handed out a course calendar that laid out all of the time consuming, thought provoking details of what was in store for us over the next few weeks. He explained to us not just all of the many papers that we were expected to write but how they would be graded and scrutinized down to the formatting of the text, proper use of all punctuations and even what format they are to be saved in and the title they should be saved as. He even went so far as to tell us what we should put in the subject line on the emails we send him. Needless to say that on that first night my inner child, who was still older than my teacher, was slouched down in that old style school desk-chair feeling like the wind had just been knocked out of her wondering how in the world I thought that I could successfully attend college after being out of school for so long, never writing a term paper and being blessed with dyslexia. I had so much going against me when I started this class. But being the kind of person who never ran from a challenge, I decided to take this on with everything that I had and make a go at it. So I mustered up the courage to come back the next class and the next.


I found myself enjoying some of the conversations and group discussions and began to focus less on what I didn’t know before I came to this class and more on what I was learning by attending the class. Mr. Gasparo did an outstanding job of bringing out the creativity in each of us. He also did a great job at getting us to look deeper in the things that we read, movies, TV and advertisement that we saw and the words of the people and music that we listened to. All in all, it was a positive experience of hard work and learning.


As the course continued I would see less and less of the almost thirty classmates that we started out with. This eight week class is not for the weak by no means and it is also not impossible to do. If I can do it so can anyone else that puts their mind to it. Although that first night of receiving the class calendar was a little overwhelming to see all that was expected of us over such a short period of time it was also very helpful because we knew exactly what was expected of us and when everything was due. Mr Gasparo was very organized, approachable and helpful. I would attend another one of his classes and would recommend him to anyone that is willing to do the work.


So here I am at the end of this English 111 course proud of myself for not only sticking with it but also maintaining a grade that I can be proud of. It definitely has been good for me and an all around positive experience.

Images from NDSU and Slough