How I survived CW I

by Seiken Okada
UMass Lowell
________________
This semester in college writing 1 I have accomplished survival. I am no strange
r to close calls, being one step away from detention, etc but of course none of
that mattered in high school. Only this time around if I failed I would not be a
ble to graduate in 3 years like I planned so it was a big deal. It was not a mat
ter of intellect, let me tell you. Ive done AP English Language and Composition a
nd AP Literature in my time. Though admittedly I did not fare well in the tests,
my class grades averaged B. And the essays then were much more vigorous-we had
like 4 projects on Hamlet alone. Therefore I can only assume the professor was t
rolling me when he said I was in danger of failing the first day of class. And h
e made sure to follow up on his threat for each subsequent essay.
One day after a particularly disheartening conference with the prejudiced profes
sor (wow a teacher that talks to you!) I asked myself what would Bob do? Bob and
I took AP classes together, and although he did not know how spelling worked he
did better than me in english. I asked him his secret to success. you gotta writ
e what they wanna hear. You can bs the whole thing and they just eat it up, said
Bob smugly. This guy is evil, was my first thought. But now Im faced with a teac
her that was bent on slapping me with a giant F to the face no matter what-I had
no other choice. I decided to kiss up with dignity. A sarcastic sycophant.
I would like to thank my professor Mr. W; without his constant threats this essa
y could not have been possible and wouldve been generic.The second essay he made
me fail, I went to a tutor to ask if it was indeed lack of skill that brought th
is upon me. We had fun bashing on the professor, but other than that he could on
ly echo words from the guidelines. Which I knew by heart. The problem this time,
according to the professor, was I missed the point of the essay. Like what doe
s that even mean. The only thing he wrote on the draft was to add more content.
I added half a page. His main gripe seemed to be he could not accept innocence a
s being a positive aspect of character. How stubborn can someone be. Is differen
ce in opinion grounds to ruin a students career? Next time, I would be as bland a
s possible. Maybe courage or kindness.
Some kind of change took over the professor by the next essay. Although it was n
ecessary he fail me he gave me an extended deadline to redo it. I think he was w
ary of the review I was prepared to write on the teacher assessment. Practically
every day the following week I emailed him a slightly different version from th
e last and received vague instructions in return. The final product was so terri
bly unoriginal and boring I was ashamed to put my name on it. It was a nice gest
ure by him though, because he pretty much wrote it for me. Which brings me to an
other strategy for survival: make someone else write it for you. Not like ghost
writer business. I mean taking ideas from someone else. More or less like plagia
rism.
The latest essay was about love. You just needed to write what it meant to you,
basically. Taking a random book concerning romance from the shelf of the library
and combining it with a leaf out of Bobs book, I managed to type two pages of no
nsense. And he dug it. This was the first essay I passed this semester and I was
quite baffled. But it was not so puzzling on second thought. The first few essa
ys I was still in the habit of being too unique but this time the topic was love
and there was no way to write something new about that. In the redone essay I m
ade the same mistake and forgot to make it boring. By this point I knew what the
professor expected. He had a hundred odd students to grade and it would be easi
er for him if they all wrote about the same things.
To be sure I included a lot of bs to make the content exciting. This hel

ped me become a creative writer but with the bonus of being capable of writing c
liche crap. I plan to use this technique for the final as well. Between you and
me, I have not had great success in job interviews of late but I can see why now
. It was because I was not playing the toady to full effect. College writing 1 h
as been a grueling, frustrating experience but totally worth. 10/10 would do aga
in. For some others, it may be other things theyve learned. For example: punctuat
ion, literary strategies, and how to upload essays but me, I already knew how to
do these things from AP.