Who am I bringing to class? (Revised)

Dear Dr. Brannon,

          "It's about how much you want it." Those are the works JJB, director of Gardner-Webb's writing center, said to me while I was sitting in her office. All the educational baggage that I thought I'd checked in when starting my undergraduate career was suddenly coming off the baggage claim belt and moving closer towards me. But JJB had faith in me. I respected her opinion, and I trusted her to tell me not what I wanted to hear but what I deserved to hear. And if she could tell me that higher education was a matter of work ethic as well as intelligence, then I was in luck. I was confident that I had at least one of those ingredients. If I wanted to continue to work with people and study the craft of writing, then a graduate degree was the next brick to be laid on my path.

          And so the road leading to who I am bringing to class began. But a look back (or in the rearview mirror) is in order.

          I was born in Durham, NC (that's right, I'm going back that far). But I can't tell you much. My early years are lost on me. Faded photographs of two-year old me sitting in my dad's lap are the best I can manage. These photographs are all lying in a box in my apartment, along with just about every artifact from every memorable experience of my life. I'm not a pack rat. I'm sentimental. Very sentimental. It's funny though, last week my parents came to Charlotte to visit me, and we started going through the box together. My mother kept pulling picture after picture from the box with a baffled expression. She turned to my dad, who was almost asleep on the couch with his eyes nearly closed, and said, "She's taken everything, Ronnie. We're not even dead yet." The corners of my dad's mouth turned up slightly before he dozed off. Mom just smiled and shook her head while I shrugged my shoulders.

         Okay, so I'm overly sentimental.

          I have all the family artifacts that are supposed to be handed down over time. I just got a little impatient. My family history is valuable to me, mostly because I know very little about it. Like a 1,000 jigsaw puzzle with chipped and missing pieces, I'm trying to piece together a picture, hoping it can tell me something. I'll let you know if the pieces start fitting together during our time together this summer.

          Twenty-three years have passed and I'm still an only child, so I think it's safe to say that I will remain so. I am the daughter of a high school dropout and a welder, who lived in the same place since she was five so I feel a little out of my time. After spending eighteen years on the same road with tobacco on my right, sweet potatoes on my left, and a pasture of cows across the street, (I'm not exaggerating) I knew I did not want to become another community college, firm believing Baptist, who married before she was twenty-five. (I swear, if I have one more sweet little o'l lady shake my hand and tell me that I need a man, I may do something I regret). I wanted something different. Something I couldn't quite name.

          I graduated high school from a small private, Christian school in Zebulon, NC. And when I say small, I mean small. I was Salutatorian...of a class of seven. But if history is an example, then I guess you could say my class was "large" because at least I wasn't in the class of three that graduated at least two years prior. When senior year came around applying to colleges felt like a standing joke among my classmates and me. We all knew our education was a flop. Even with a class our size, you'd be amazed at how we could yank teachers around. I've seen test answers stolen, teachers in tears, and I've had enough free periods that I think it qualifies as truancy. It's like we knew (we just wouldn't say) that only one or two of us would actually "make it". Sure we'd all get out. But we'd go about it different ways. Marriage. Military. I knew the way I wanted to go. It had to be education. And I guess it was kind of expected of me. I was the "good student". Although, if "good" qualified as sitting in the back of the classroom, taking notes, and making sure everyone had their homework then yeah, I guess I was the good student. "Hannah, do we have a test today?" "Hannah, can I see your notes?" or "Hannah, what's the answer to number 7?" Okay, I did draw the line there. I felt like the mother of six.

          In 2009 I was admitted and enrolled at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, NC. I think it goes without saying that I was terribly self-conscious about my education. Within my first year, I had issues with self-doubt. I put myself in a constant comparison game with my peers. And when you're constantly measuring yourself against everyone around you, it takes your focus off of your own growth. But I was fortunate. I met someone who jarred my views on education and eventually writing.

          Sitting in English 101, Freshman Composition, I was reading my professor's first response on my work. And it made me feel good about my writing. It wasn't at all what I expected, which was a few markings and a grade at the top. Instead it was a letter from Dr. Shana Hartman, who at the time was Dr. Woodward. Over the term, I started to see my writing as less of a product and more of a conversation between myself and my reader. My time under Dr. Hartman was when I started to take my writing seriously. And when I started sharing it with others.

          I did a lot of growing up in college. But then, I think college does that to you. Whether it be a theory coined from a scholar you've never heard of or a 2 a.m. conversation you never forget, a lot of learning takes place. For me, these sites included a space on the second floor of the Student Center with a glass door labeled, Writing Center; an office in the back corner of a Craig Hall, and a seat in a classroom on the bottom floor of Craig Hall where I and three other education students sat.

            The classroom where I now reside is on the second floor of the Fretwell building. I can't pin point the exact event or moment in which I decided on the path that places me in a room with what I would describe as a growing ensemble, I suppose I’m still improvising my identity even as I speak (or type). It’s not that I made the decision lightly or in passing, but rather, the decision to go to graduate school snuck up behind me. It practically mugged me. In my mind, it wasn't even a possibility. Sure, I'd grown as writer. I adored my time in the writing center, writing with people, writing for people. But graduate school was for other people, smarter people.


Sincerely,

Hannah Mayfield