Bad Writing!

Hey! I resemble that remark.

I can’t believe this is going to be a movie. Do people actually want to sit through an hour and a half of cheesy examples of bad writing? Really? They must. I will admit that I love the statement, “No one was a worse writer than me.” I love it because in my case it’s true. I have a confession.
I dropped out of college. Yep. The first time I attempted to get a degree was directly out of high school. It was 1984 and yes, Sam, I had the mullet at that time. But what’s important here is why I dropped out of school.

I was enrolled at North Texas State University. I moved into the dorms fresh out of high school and barely a month over 18. I was wide eyed at the size of the campus, the number of students, and oh my, the boys!

I had tested into a sophomore level English class. I was so proud. I had also tested into a math class so low that it didn’t count toward my degree credits, but man were my English scores high. I stared the sophomore English class with enthusiasm and excitement. There were two football players in there! So cool. I was on time and sat down in the front row.

When we got our first writing assignment, I executed it with the thrill of writing that I’ve always possessed. It was longer than the assignment required, but not by so much as to be a pretentious showoff. I made sure I fulfilled each part outlined in the instructions. I can’t remember exactly, but I believe it was some sort of expository report on a current affair. (Remember, this was the day of typewriters – no computers for us in 1984, no spell-check, no red squiggly lines to help out the poor fat fingered typist.)

A week later, I sat in that class brimming with excitement, waiting for the professors’ review. That was, until the professor grimaced and told us that these were some of the poorest examples of second year college writing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t be talking about me. MY paper was great. MY paper was written by a student who tested completely out of first year college English. I was golden.

He reached down to his pile, removed one of those papers and began to read. Uh oh. He regaled the class about how this particular student had subjected him to an overuse of alliteration, a basic misunderstanding of the English language and horrible use of grammar. It hurt to hear him be so harsh. I sunk in my seat. He plopped the paper in front of me and tsked. I could have died. He had been reading MY paper.

How could he? F- I still hate red ink.

I sulked back to my dorm, horrified and embarrassed. I dropped out of school that very day –
my writing was so bad.

Luckily, I’m a stubborn bitch. A couple years later, I later returned to school, got tested for dyslexia, bought a computer and got my degree. Since then, I’ve written a bunch of amusingly bad stuff. I tried a western, action adventure that read more like a cartoon script, some really bad poetry, and a bunch of short stories that went nowhere, but I kept writing. Now, I feel like I’m a pretty good writer. I still make the occasional horrible grammar mistake, I’m still dyslexic, but I keep writing. I couldn’t stop just because of one particular Asshole teacher, but because of him I too can say –

No one was a worse writer than me…

Kiss Kiss
~Mari