Jacob
Kirsch
10/19/15
English
101
Dr. Sonia Begert
It all started in September 2007
when I attempted to write my first real essay. It was the first day of school,
so everyone was excited. We had to wait outside of the school in an area sort
of like a college quad until our teacher, Mr. Brennan, opened the door. We
would often get cold really fast since fall was right around the corner. The
quad-like area was somewhat depressing, just a lot of concrete and a couple of
blue picnic tables with benches attached to them. Dead leaves would often blow
around like tumbleweeds in a desert. Since the whole classroom had to wait
outside, most people got acquainted before we even got into the room. I checked
my crappy glow-in-the-dark watch that I got out of a Rice Krispies cereal box. It
was one minute until 8:45, when school was supposed to start. All of a sudden
the worn blue metal door opened and we saw a tall bald man who looked like Mr.
Clean, with some kind of beard/mustache combination. It was Mr. Brennan. He
seemed happy to see us, and impatiently invited us in.
The classroom was pretty….
Interesting. It had brick walls, hideous blue and brown carpet, some bright orange counter tops that lined two walls, and a humongous heater under a window that
overlooked the “quad”. There were about seven tables in the room with names on
them. The tables had a “wood-like” plastic pattern surface, which sat four to
each. We quickly found our spots and sat down. Before we could start chatting
with our tablemates, Mr. Brennan began his introduction.
“Welcome to the 3rd
grade!” He exclaimed. “I’m Mr. Brennan, your teacher for the entire year. I’m
so excited to be working with you!”
He continued introducing himself,
talked about the class, and assigned our first project, an essay. Mr. Brennan
handed out a paper, our first prompt. I took out my red notebook and placed it
on the table in front of me, I was ready. The prompt read “Talk about your
favorite type of dog and why it is your favorite! Your favorite dog could be
any type of dog, real or fictional. Creatively write your essay in a five
paragraph essay form.”
I had to do a double take. “What
was a five paragraph essay form?” I thought. “Was I supposed to learn this last
year?” Panic started creeping in, my skin started to crawl. I just kept staring
at the prompt as time flew by faster than a military jet. As it did, anxiety
engulfed me. About 2 hours later (which seemed easily like 5 minutes), we were
dismissed for lunch.
My classmates and I made our way to the
multipurpose room, a huge gym-like area where we also had P.E. The floor was
light brown hardwood with blue, red, and yellow painted lines for basketball
and other sports. The room was illuminated by huge windows near the ceiling, 3
four paned windows per wall. Even though the majority of the students went up
in line to buy hot lunch, I never did. I sat down at one of the brown fold-up
tables, put down my red rectangular prism-like lunchbox, took in some air, and
let out a huge sigh. I had no idea what I was doing, I couldn’t even touch my
food. This essay was one of my biggest challenges yet. A challenge that I didn’t
even know how to begin.
At the end of lunch, we were
instructed by the lunch lady whose main job was to make sure we weren’t up to
any shenanigans at lunch, to go back to our class. As I stumbled out of the
multipurpose room, I felt as if I was about to burst out crying. Why was I not
able to do this? Everyone else seemed to have an amazingly easy time with this
project. I felt so ashamed and secluded, like I was stupid for not knowing how
to write an easy five paragraph essay.
My class walked back to our room.
Everyone took their seat and continued to work on our essays. I just kept
staring at the prompt, occasionally acting like I was writing my essay in my notebook.
About 10 minutes before class got out, I snuck out the door that connected to
the hall, and hid in the bathroom until class was out so I didn’t have to turn
in all zero pages of my essay. I ran to the bus, and couldn’t even thing about
anything else for the rest of the night.
The next day turned out to be
different. Mr. Brennan handed back
essays, not mine of course, and asked some of my peers to read theirs, luckily
I wasn’t chosen. As I listened to my classmate’s essays, I tried to understand
the form, and it still didn’t click. Some of their essays were very creative,
especially this one guy’s whose favorite dog was a blue one with rainbow polka
dots. It was weird, but still very enjoyable. Later, we were dismissed for
lunch, Mr. Brennan stopped me right in my tracks.
“Jacob,” he said in an expressive
voice, “I didn’t see your essay in the stack of ones I received, did you hand
it in?”
I confessed. I told him that I
didn’t do any of it, and because I didn’t know how to.
“Well why didn’t you ask for help?”
he asked. I looked at the ground and remained silent with embarrassment.
“Alright,” he sighed. “Stay in here
during lunch and I’ll explain it to you.” I was just happy I didn’t get in
trouble.
Mr. Brennan urged me to grab a chair
and come sit next to him in front of his computer. He pulled out his pesto
spaghetti that he had packed for lunch, and opened a Microsoft word file on his
computer.
“This is my template essay that I
show to students who are having some trouble with theirs,” he said with some
kind of proud tone. “You’re not the only one who didn’t understand, so don’t
worry.”
He voiced that multiple students
came up to him yesterday, not understanding how to write the essay. And just
like that, so much anxiety and worry slid off my shoulders like a newly
polished hockey puck on ice. I pulled out my notebook and started to take notes
while Mr. Brennan slowly ate his green-speckled noodles.
“In a five paragraph essay, each
paragraph should have at least 5 sentences. its first paragraph, is your
introduction.” I started writing furiously in my notebook. “The first sentence
is your opener, a short sentence about the main idea of your topic. The next
three sentences should be your main points about your essay. For example, in yesterdays
prompt, your main points would be why your favorite dog is your favorite.”
He described some creative examples
like “because my favorite dog changes color” or “because my favorite dog
sings”. I slowly started to understand everything as he went on to cover the
last sentence of the first paragraph and the next 4 paragraphs. I was confident
I was going to do this right. As Mr. Brennan finished up my classmates started
to enter the room.
“I’m going to give you time to work
on your essay out in the hall for the rest of the school day.” Mr. Brennan
uttered to me. He ended up printing out his template for me to use, so all the
stress notes I took and the cramp in my hand from writing too fast was
ultimately for nothing. I thanked him an easy one thousand times, then skipped
out into the hall. I put the prompt and my notebook on the only work space in
the hall. It was a tan desk that was attached to the chair like you would see
in 90’s movies. As I sat down, every word and sentence came to me so easy. Every
minute I would look at what I wrote and then look at the template to make sure
I was writing everything correctly in the correct form. School dismissed at
3:15, and I surprisingly ended up finishing it at 3:10. I was so happy and
proud of myself. I had completed my first essay. I ripped the pages out of my
notebook, ran into the classroom to staple it, and handed it in. Mr. Brennan
read over my essay and gave me a huge smile.
“It looks great, Jacob!” he
chuckled. “I bet next week’s essay
will be even better!”
My smile morphed into a face of
disbelief. I asked him to repeat.
“Next week’s essay…. We have one
every week.” Something I apparently missed in the introduction. I turned
around, walked to my seat, sat down for the last few minutes, and tried to
focus on the work of art I just finished, not what he just shared with me. I
had completed my first essay.
Even though some students and
graduates say that a majority of the information they learn in school they will
never use again, I knew the 5 paragraph essay form was different. I will
forever be thankful to Mr. Brennan for sharing a literary method and tool that
will help me with my education path for the rest of my life.
