Michael Rojas-Steinbrecher

English 1103

Rothwell

1/27/11

Tension Narrative

It is the final spring semester for a Wake Early College student named

Michael. He is pretty happy with the classes he has for his final semester as a high

school student. Chemistry II, Calculus, and US History are not hard at all. The one

class that Michael is worried about is American Literature. His isn’t worried about

the class itself, but the teacher. Dr. Ball, the English professor, is a very evil man to

Wake Early College students. He did not think that high school students are capable

of taking college English classes. To prove his point, he made it so that no high

school student in his class could get above a B. Michael has had Dr. Ball before and

for some odd reason, Dr. Ball dislikes him. Dr. Ball seems to find pleasure in calling

him out during class for any small thing, like sitting in the back of the room or for

not commenting on something. Michael was not looking forward for this last

semester in American literature.

Michael was doing very well in his last semester has a high school student.

Almost all his classes were going extremely well, but the only class that seemed to

give Michael trouble was American literature. This class only had a couple of grades

in it throughout the year. There were four major outside essays and two in class

essays for the midterm and the final, so each grade really impacts the final grade. By

April, Michael had a C in Dr. Ball’s class and there were only two grades left in the
semester. He had one last essay outside of class and the final exam. If Michael did

well on these two essays then he would be able to raise that C to a B.

The day that Michael got the prompt for the final essay, he was very happy.

He was able to write about Langston Hughes, a subject that Michael was very

familiar with. Michael spent hours and hours finding research on the three poems

he had to write about. He knew exactly what he was going to say and how he was

going to say it. A week before the essay was due, Michael took his paper to the

Individualized Learning Center at Wake Tech to get it checked for grammatical

errors and citations. This paper was one of the best papers Michael has ever

written, he spent so much time writing and looking over it. There was nothing

wrong with the paper at all. He could already see that B on his transcript.

A week after Michael turned in the paper Dr. Ball had graded them. Michael

was very anxious to see what grade he got on his final out of class essay. He went to

the folder, picked up his essay and opened it. A 68 was written on the final page.

There must have been a mix up, something must have gone wrong, Michael thought

to himself. There is no way he could have gotten a failing grade after spending so

much time and effort on his paper. He was furious with the grade and Dr. Ball.

Right after class, Michael went to his teacher’s office to ask him why he did so

horribly.

According to Dr. Ball, Michael did not write about the Harlem Renaissance in

his essay. He was very confused because this essay was on interpreting three

different essays, not the time period in which Langston Hughes started to become

popular. Dr. Ball had given Michael such a bad grade because he did not believe
Michael understood the Harlem Renaissance. This was not true at all. Michael told

him everything that he knew about this time period and Dr. Ball was very surprised.

He asked why I had not written about the Harlem Renaissance before and Michael

simply said that he didn’t think that it was important giving the topic. He told

Michael that he would give him another week to rewrite his paper and add the

significance of the Harlem Renaissance in it. This was not too bad, at least he was

given another chance to get a better grade. Michael wrote all he knew about the

Harlem Renaissance and how Langston Hughes was such huge part of it.

After the one-week deadline, Michael had added about two pages of extra

information about the Harlem Renaissance. He turned in his paper to Dr. Ball,

hoping that it would be enough to raise his grade to a B. After another week, Dr. Ball

had his paper graded. Michael received an 87 on his final paper. Even though it was

a B, Michael still wasn’t too happy. He had spent so much time on this paper, only to

be given a B. He believed it was worthy on an A without a doubt. At this time, there

was nothing more he could do. He had to accept the grade and focus on getting an A

on his final exam.

At the end of the semester, Michael ended up getting a B as his final grade for

his English literature. He was pretty happy with his grade because he had received

a C in his first class with Dr. Ball. Even though his grade went up one letter, Michael

still despises Dr. Ball for his grading and his hatred towards Wake Early College

students. Michael was just relieved that he did not have to take another class with

this man again.