Although a unique man to say the least, Mr. Welch was the best English teacher I have ever had. He was a man who had a fierce hatred for squirrels, the dark urge to sit outside during thunderstorms with a smile plastered on his face, and the unparalleled motivation to write reference letters for each and every English student who chose to take his junior year honors English class in high school. Before I signed up for this year-long commitment of sitting through hour-long classes and seemingly impossible assignments, I gathered all of the information I could about Mr. Welch and made the firm decision to challenge myself with this class. I had not yet been truly challenged in my high school career in English; at this point in my life, I craved the difficulty of furthering myself as a writer and a student.
Mr. Welch assigned around 50 pages of reading a night. His pop quizzes were simply passages taken out of the reading with specific words missing; our task was to try to remember what word it possibly could be. At times it was a specific color that Mr. Welch deemed important, other times it was an object that he felt held some sort of meaning towards the story. Once a week throughout the entire year, we had a vocabulary test on a set of 20 vocab words. These tests were cumulative and the pool of vocab words for Mr. Welch to pick to place on the test simply grew and grew; by the end of the year, I had a stack of flashcards the size of a small child. He highly valued the importance of a journal and recognized the crucial push necessary for students to continually practice their writing. He required us to time stamp our journals daily, without any specific topic guidelines (whatever we deemed fit) and would merely check the completion versus content to record our grades. We were assigned 10 longer papers throughout the year, containing preplanning paper requirements (very specific to Mr. Welch’s liking), multiple rewrites, and our final drafts. Our last and most heavily weighted assignment was a surprisingly thick final portfolio full of every draft, rewrite, and final paper we wrote within the entire class. Along with this, he required 3 rewrites on any of the 10 final drafts we submitted and received feedback on, rewarding us a chance to recognize the things that truly needed to be adjusted in our writing and to figure out how to fix it.
We accomplished a nearly impossible amount of work within one year; by the end, I found myself to be, despite my consistent B, one of Mr. Welch’s favorite students. He would never verbally admit to having favorites, but Mr. Welch wasn’t one to hide his own emotions or preferences. Any time we were at the beginning stages of writing our first drafts, he would come to my desk to see what I had planned. I always attempted to find out how far I could stretch the less common interpretations of the short stories we had read because I knew that Mr. Welch would have preferred to read something interesting, rather than common. I fully thrust myself into Mr. Welch’s class in a way I had never applied myself before, taking full advantage of every little word of wisdom that seeped from that brilliant man’s mouth. I watched my fellow students have mental breakdowns, yell at Mr. Welch, even report Mr. Welch. One student went as far as to chuck Mr. Welch’s familial picture frame out of his classroom window after he was told that he needed to think harder about his topics. Truthfully, I think his students were too afraid to not get an A to really pay attention to what he had to say. Every single difficult assignment and journal entry and vocabulary word learned had so much more meaning towards my future in English than I had truly recognized— we believed it was merely meant for our suffering, but it was only meant to better us as writers and as people in the real world.
After taking this class, I decided that English was exactly what I wished to pursue. Mr. Welch inspired me to become an English major; he fostered my love for reading and writing and exposed me to my very own talent and passion in the subject. However, what I hoped to get out of being an English major, I wasn’t entirely sure. All I knew was that I wanted to write— it was the one thing I truly loved. Coming to college raised a lot of questions.
“An English major, do you want to be a teacher?”
“What are you hoping to do with that?”
“So, you’re going to go to graduate school after your undergrad?”
“You want to be a writer? What do you plan to do to pay the bills?”
“Do you have any ideas of what types of internships you could apply for?”
Truthfully, I had not thought far enough ahead to truly be able to answer these questions with confidence. Entering my junior year, I decided to approach my confusion surrounding my career choices head on. I applied to every internship that seemed interesting to me, even if it did not completely align with the jobs typical of an English major. Since then, I have had three internships in three completely different fields. My first internship in the fall and winter of my junior year was at a publishing company; I worked directly with the woman in charge as I read queries, drafted rejection letters and passed along my acceptances to my boss to review. It felt almost as amazing to help others’ writing succeed as it did to write myself. My second internship in the summer before my senior year was in the human services field at a day habilitation program working directly with adults with developmental disabilities. It was an unforgettable experience in which I learned the flexible dynamic of my skillset. My third internship, which I currently hold, is in the marketing field while I complete a variety of tasks, ranging from social media posts to contact cleanup for a human services nonprofit. Exposing myself to a wide range of internships opened my eyes to all the possibilities that an English major holds and helped me discover my passion for helping others and demonstrating effective communication within all areas of work.
English majors possess writing and communication skills that companies in every field yearn for in job candidates. All else can be learned and taught but knowing how to properly write and express oneself efficiently is a skill that truthfully takes years to master. These skills have allowed my creative writing to soar. Back in my senior year of high school, I was rewarded senior spotlight for our literary magazine, gaining five pages of creative freedom. I will never forget when I passed Mr. Welch in the basement floor hallway, immediately noticing the magazine in his hand. He had looked up at me and asked if writing was something that I wished to pursue. I was nervous to answer yes, fully expecting his response to be a flood of questions similar to those I had received since determining my intended major. “Good, you really have something special here. Never stop writing,” Mr. Welch said before walking away. And I never did, nor have I ever regretted becoming an English major. Although it took me a little while to recognize that my opportunities will never be limited because of my college major choice, Mr. Welch’s words blessed my ears at the end of my senior year of high school, granting me confidence and tranquility moving forward. This is something I do not believe would have been possible if given from any other person in my life.
Mr. Welch assigned around 50 pages of reading a night. His pop quizzes were simply passages taken out of the reading with specific words missing; our task was to try to remember what word it possibly could be. At times it was a specific color that Mr. Welch deemed important, other times it was an object that he felt held some sort of meaning towards the story. Once a week throughout the entire year, we had a vocabulary test on a set of 20 vocab words. These tests were cumulative and the pool of vocab words for Mr. Welch to pick to place on the test simply grew and grew; by the end of the year, I had a stack of flashcards the size of a small child. He highly valued the importance of a journal and recognized the crucial push necessary for students to continually practice their writing. He required us to time stamp our journals daily, without any specific topic guidelines (whatever we deemed fit) and would merely check the completion versus content to record our grades. We were assigned 10 longer papers throughout the year, containing preplanning paper requirements (very specific to Mr. Welch’s liking), multiple rewrites, and our final drafts. Our last and most heavily weighted assignment was a surprisingly thick final portfolio full of every draft, rewrite, and final paper we wrote within the entire class. Along with this, he required 3 rewrites on any of the 10 final drafts we submitted and received feedback on, rewarding us a chance to recognize the things that truly needed to be adjusted in our writing and to figure out how to fix it.
We accomplished a nearly impossible amount of work within one year; by the end, I found myself to be, despite my consistent B, one of Mr. Welch’s favorite students. He would never verbally admit to having favorites, but Mr. Welch wasn’t one to hide his own emotions or preferences. Any time we were at the beginning stages of writing our first drafts, he would come to my desk to see what I had planned. I always attempted to find out how far I could stretch the less common interpretations of the short stories we had read because I knew that Mr. Welch would have preferred to read something interesting, rather than common. I fully thrust myself into Mr. Welch’s class in a way I had never applied myself before, taking full advantage of every little word of wisdom that seeped from that brilliant man’s mouth. I watched my fellow students have mental breakdowns, yell at Mr. Welch, even report Mr. Welch. One student went as far as to chuck Mr. Welch’s familial picture frame out of his classroom window after he was told that he needed to think harder about his topics. Truthfully, I think his students were too afraid to not get an A to really pay attention to what he had to say. Every single difficult assignment and journal entry and vocabulary word learned had so much more meaning towards my future in English than I had truly recognized— we believed it was merely meant for our suffering, but it was only meant to better us as writers and as people in the real world.
After taking this class, I decided that English was exactly what I wished to pursue. Mr. Welch inspired me to become an English major; he fostered my love for reading and writing and exposed me to my very own talent and passion in the subject. However, what I hoped to get out of being an English major, I wasn’t entirely sure. All I knew was that I wanted to write— it was the one thing I truly loved. Coming to college raised a lot of questions.
“An English major, do you want to be a teacher?”
“What are you hoping to do with that?”
“So, you’re going to go to graduate school after your undergrad?”
“You want to be a writer? What do you plan to do to pay the bills?”
“Do you have any ideas of what types of internships you could apply for?”
Truthfully, I had not thought far enough ahead to truly be able to answer these questions with confidence. Entering my junior year, I decided to approach my confusion surrounding my career choices head on. I applied to every internship that seemed interesting to me, even if it did not completely align with the jobs typical of an English major. Since then, I have had three internships in three completely different fields. My first internship in the fall and winter of my junior year was at a publishing company; I worked directly with the woman in charge as I read queries, drafted rejection letters and passed along my acceptances to my boss to review. It felt almost as amazing to help others’ writing succeed as it did to write myself. My second internship in the summer before my senior year was in the human services field at a day habilitation program working directly with adults with developmental disabilities. It was an unforgettable experience in which I learned the flexible dynamic of my skillset. My third internship, which I currently hold, is in the marketing field while I complete a variety of tasks, ranging from social media posts to contact cleanup for a human services nonprofit. Exposing myself to a wide range of internships opened my eyes to all the possibilities that an English major holds and helped me discover my passion for helping others and demonstrating effective communication within all areas of work.
English majors possess writing and communication skills that companies in every field yearn for in job candidates. All else can be learned and taught but knowing how to properly write and express oneself efficiently is a skill that truthfully takes years to master. These skills have allowed my creative writing to soar. Back in my senior year of high school, I was rewarded senior spotlight for our literary magazine, gaining five pages of creative freedom. I will never forget when I passed Mr. Welch in the basement floor hallway, immediately noticing the magazine in his hand. He had looked up at me and asked if writing was something that I wished to pursue. I was nervous to answer yes, fully expecting his response to be a flood of questions similar to those I had received since determining my intended major. “Good, you really have something special here. Never stop writing,” Mr. Welch said before walking away. And I never did, nor have I ever regretted becoming an English major. Although it took me a little while to recognize that my opportunities will never be limited because of my college major choice, Mr. Welch’s words blessed my ears at the end of my senior year of high school, granting me confidence and tranquility moving forward. This is something I do not believe would have been possible if given from any other person in my life.