About six times a year, I run a workshop for various student groups on campus about how to write an effective personal statement for use in applying for an internship, a job, a summer research fellowship, admission to a graduate program, etc. These are notoriously difficult documents to write. All too often, the writer ends up sounding like a ridiculous braggart or merely repeats information that is readily available on their resumé, wasting a critical opportunity to emerge as an interesting individual the reader would want to know more about and work with.
What I ask the students to do instead is to tell the reader the story of how they became interested in their “thing,” in the subject matter, question, problem, or career path they currently care about. This could be related to their major and prospective world of work, or it could be some abiding, serious hobby, or it could be some public or civic issue that are compelled to advocate for. How far back can they trace their interest in this topic? Where, when, and how did it enter their lives? Who or what happened to them that sparked their interest in this area? Once, they have specifically identified one such influential event or person that started them down this path, I ask to think of some second event or person who helped cement their interest in this area, who deepened their commitment to do this kind of work.
Every summer, I do four of these workshops for visiting science campers and students in summer undergraduate research programs. I just finished this year’s slate, and having repeatedly identified as examples two critically important people in MY story about MY thing – my career in English studies and teaching – I think it is time I shared these stories with a wider audience. I am surprised to find that I have not yet already done so, it seems.
My interest in English and writing as a subject area began in 8th grade at Wantagh Junior High School, in Wantagh, New York. My English teacher that year was Ms. Patricia Barton, who was young and smart and enthusiastic and cute. I readily admit that I was smitten.
But then one day in class, during our creative writing unit, she read a piece of writing aloud. It was a short descriptive essay about the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations at an indoor track meet at the Nassau Coliseum. It was MY writing, but she did not identify it as my writing. She simply said, “This is good writing.” If I was smitten before that, she – and English – owned me body and soul afterward. That tiny, single bit of praise was galvanizing, transformative. It made me realize that I liked writing, and that I was good at it – that I was good at something, good at anything. Before that, I wasn’t really sure.
Let us leap ahead about six years. I am an English major at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and I am in trouble. I am already deeply engaged in what will ultimately be a desperate 10-year struggle with drugs and alcohol. I like my classes and my professors, and I am trying to be a dutiful student, but I am more interested in staying drunk or high, frankly, and that is apparent to everyone around me. Still, I go to class, and do the assignments to the best of my impaired ability, and I enjoy the work. My favorite professor at the time was Dr. Donald Fry, who taught Old English and Arthurian literature, and I took three separate courses with him.
The problem, however, was that he liked to teach Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8:00 am, which is a hellaciously bad time of day for an alcoholic. And there were also only a few other students in these classes, so there was nowhere to hide. One day, as eight of us sat around a conference table, translating Beowulf line by line, I passed out or fell asleep, head down on the table. Dr. Fry tapped me on the shoulder when class was over and everyone else was gone. “Follow me,” he said, and led me down the corridor to the teacher’s lounge. I figured I was getting expelled from the class. “Get yourself a cup of coffee,” he said, so I did and sat down on the couch opposite him. “What’s going on with you?” he asked, and it all came pouring tearfully out: about my parents’ imminent divorce, my girlfriend dumping me, my obviously failing out of school, my drug and alcohol addiction, and other dramas too many and too mortifying to recount here. Dr. Fry just listened to me gush for about 15 minutes, and then he gently said, “I know you are not going to believe me when I tell you this, but it is going to be OK.” And that little act of kindness kept me in school, because I was quite ready to quit at that point.
I was fortunate enough to keep some contact with Ms. Barton and Dr. Fry over the years. I sent them both copies of the first book I published on the teaching of writing, for instance. Both have passed on now, but as I am gearing up mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually for the Fall 2025 semester here at Virginia Tech, for my 40th year of university teaching, I know that I would not be here, doing what I do, doing what I LOVE to do and apparently do well, if it weren’t for Patricia Barton, Donald Fry, and the whole, inclusive roster of my teachers and mentors over the years. I am grateful for the ongoing opportunity to pay their love forward.