here in the hallway until the place starts to fill up,” I advised. “Then drift in with the rest. Don’t sit up front, but don’t try to hide at the back of the room, either—that’s where the hopeless cases usually are. Try to blend in as much as possible.”
“You sound like a bad spy novel,” she accused. “Next you’ll be talking about code words, disguises, and invisible ink.”
“Maybe I am being a little obvious,” I admitted.
“Real obvious. I’m a big girl, and I know all about blending into the scenery.”
“OK. Today’s class won’t be too long. We’ll do the bookkeeping, I’ll deliver my speech, and then I’ll split before anybody can pin me to the wall. You mingle a bit, then go back out to the garage. I’ll be in the car.”
“Why not wait in your office?”
“Because I don’t want to spend the rest of the day here. The suck-ups will home in on that place like a pack of wolves. Are you going to be OK here?”
“I’m fine, Markie. Quit worrying.”
“OK, I’ll see you after class, then.”
I went back to the garage to gather up the official-looking junk I had in the backseat, then I ran over my canned speech to make sure I’d hit all the high points. The first class session sets the tone for the rest of the quarter, so I wanted to be sure I had it right.
I kept a close eye on my watch and hit the classroom door at precisely one-thirty. I went directly to the desk, opened my briefcase, and took out the stack of papers I kept in there. Then I faced this year’s crop of freshmen. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” I said briskly. “This is section BR of English 131, Expository Writing. My name is Austin, and I’ll be your instructor. Please pass your enrollment cards to the left, and I’ll distribute the course syllabus when I pick them up.”
There was the usual stirring around while they tried to find the enrollment cards among all the other papers they’d been given on sign-up day.
“Quickly, quickly,” I nudged them. “We’ve only got an hour, and we’ve got other fish to fry.”
It didn’t do any good; it never does. It still took them the usual ten minutes or so to get the cards to the end of each row. Then I gathered the cards and distributed the course descriptions.
“All right, then,” I said after that was finished, “Let’s begin. For most of you, this is your first day of college. You’ll find that things here are quite a bit different from what you’ve been accustomed to. You’re adults now, and we expect more from you. You’re here to study and to learn. You’re not here to occupy space; you’re here to work. If you don’t work, you’ll fail, and then you’ll get to do it all over again. This is a required course, and you won’t get your degree until you’ve managed to get a passing grade from me or from one of my colleagues. Our goal is to teach you how to write papers that your professors can understand. Writing was invented several thousand years ago as a way to pass information back and forth between humans. Since most of you are human, it’s a fairly important skill.” I paused and looked around. “Nonhumans, naturally, aren’t required to take this course, so all nonhumans are excused.”
It got the same laugh it always got. It was a silly thing to say, but a few laughs never hurt.
“Would you define ‘human’ for us, Mr. Austin?” a young fellow near the front of the room asked.
“You’ll have to take that up with the folks in anthropology,” I told him. “I operate on the theory that anybody whose knuckles don’t drag on the ground when he walks is probably human. But we digress. As students, you’ll need to communicate with your professors in a way slightly more advanced than grunts and whistles. That’s why you’re here. I’m supposed to teach you how to write, so we’re going to write—at least you are—and you’re going to start now. Your first assignment is a five-hundred-word essay, and just for old times’ sake, why don’t you take a run at the ever-popular ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation’? Since you’ve all probably been working on that old turkey since about the fifth grade, you should have a head start on it. You’ll be graded on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and thought content. It’s due on Wednesday, so you’d better buckle down.”
There were sounds of serious discontent.
“Hey, gang,” I said, “if that makes you unhappy, the door’s right over there. You can walk out anytime you want.”
There was the customary shocked silence when I dropped that on them. Teachers at the high-school level almost never invite their students to leave.
“I’m not your friend, people,” I told them bluntly. “I’m not here to make you happy. If your papers aren’t up to standard, you’ll get to do them over again—and again—and again. You’ll keep doing them over until you get them right, and that won’t alter the fact that you’ll be writing other papers as well, and you’ll probably be rewriting those also. Things will definitely start to back up on you after a while if you keep turning in tripe.”
“How much credit for class participation, Mr. Austin?” the young fellow who’d asked for a definition of human asked in a slightly worried tone. I get that question every quarter—usually from speech majors who’d sooner die than actually put something down on paper.
I shrugged. “None. You’re here to write, not to talk. If you want to say something to me, write it down. Then type it, because I won’t accept handwritten papers. Use pica type and standard margins. You might want to pick up a copy of the MLA style sheet. That’s the final word on academic style.”
I saw the usual look of blank incomprehension. “The Modern Language Association,” I translated. “Try to write complete sentences; incomplete ones irritate me. Oh, one other thing. You’ll encounter people out there who’ll try to sell you papers. Don’t waste your money. I’ve already seen most of them, so I’ll recognize them. If you try to foist a secondhand paper off on me, you’ll be taking this course over again, because I’ll flunk you right on the spot. You should probably know that my flunk rate doesn’t even come close to the bell curve. If I happen to get an entire class of incompetents, I’ll flunk the whole bunch. Now, then, if you want to drop the course or change instructors, go to the Registrar’s Office. Don’t pester me with your problems.”
I let that soak in just a bit. “Any questions?” I asked.
There was a sullen silence, and I was fairly sure that my deliberate mention of the registrar was ringing a few bells.
I looked around. “Not a word?” I asked mildly. “Not even a few whimpers? Aw, shucky-darn.”
There was a nervous laugh. Evidently I’d gotten through to most of them. “You seem to have grasped my basic point, then,” I told them. “The policy here is ‘my house; my rules.’ As long as you remember that, we’ll get along fine. Class dismissed.” I scooped up the enrollment cards, stowed them in my briefcase, and was out the door before any of the suck-up crowd could get in my way. A strategy of abruptitude works quite well when you want to make a clean getaway during those early sessions. Shock and run cuts the sniveling short; linger-longering just encourages it.
I went out to the garage, unlocked my car, and leafed through the enrollment cards to take a body count. There were too many, of course. There always are. My unfriendly speech in the classroom had been
