Final Words

(Below is the letter that I gave to my writing classes today, our last day of regular classes.)

Dearest Students,

Over the past nine months, I have come to know each of you as unique, bright, hilarious, thoughtful, and sincere individuals, and each of you has garnered my adoration, respect, and praise. From my perspective, you have seemed like seeds bursting through soil. You may have grown at different speeds, but each of you has unfurled and reached toward the sun. How proud I am of you all! And how sad I am to be saying goodbye so soon!

In light of my departure, I wanted to leave you with something from me. Because I love to write, and because you, my dear students, are now all writers as well, I naturally wanted to leave you with words. These words are my words of advice: some of the advice I have tried to give you throughout this year and other advice that I have not had the chance to share.

Advice on writing…

1) Write things that you love with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul. But if the things you write do not fit your purpose, choke them, stab them, gouge out their eyes, steal their wallets, and leave them on the side of the road to die.

2) In writing, procrastination is the devil. This is because writing is a process. It doesn’t matter who you are. In order to write well, you must give yourself time to think, to organize, to write, to rewrite, to revise, and to edit. When you receive a paper assignment, you should trick yourself into believing that it’s due a week before it actually is. Then start working on it immediately.

3) In this class, you have made many new friends who will help you through the rest of your academic career. The most important ones are:
-the thesis statement
-the topic sentence and its best buddy, the controlling idea
-the fraternal twins of unity and coherence
Yes, these new friends may not be as exciting as your other friends. You may be embarrassed to invite them to parties or write on their Facebook wall. But do not ignore them when it comes paper time, or they will single-handedly destroy everything you create.

4) Yes, Google is hands-down the best search engine on the web. But Google Translate is not a person who is fluent in 52 languages. It is a computer program. And when a computer program tells you that you should write phrases like “asshole singlet” in your paper, phrases that you do not understand or that you suspect contain English swear words, you should not trust it. Because it is not a person who is fluent in 52 languages. It is a computer program.

5) “Because it is not a person who is fluent in 52 languages” is not actually a sentence.

6) Writing and thinking are inseparable. Even if your grammar is perfect, your sentences are complex, and your paragraphs are well-organized, your paper will still ultimately fail if you do not have something that is worth saying.

7) If you plagiarize, ever, as long as I am alive in this world, I will buy a gun (remember, it is easy to do this in the United States), and I will fly to Lithuania, and, although I will not shoot you (being a Christian), I will personally lock you in a room and feed you only dry bread and rotten fish until you repent and promise to never, NEVER do that again. I don’t have a lot of money either to buy a gun or to fly back to Lithuania, so please respect my financial position and do not do this.

Advice on life (or “Things I Wish I Had Known Ten Years Ago”)…

1) As human beings, you are given three things: a mind, a body, and a soul. You are already cultivating your minds, but as you do this, you must not forget that these three things are all inextricably linked together. In order to do your best, you must also give your body and your soul the things they need, things like exercise and vegetables and prayer and beauty. Only then will you discover your true capabilities.

2) Kindness is more important than cleverness. Trust me. I have dated a lot of guys who believed the opposite, and they were really bad boyfriends.

3) Your expectations of someone affect that person’s behavior. It is therefore rational to have high expectations of everyone you meet, including yourself.

4) Every person, no matter how smelly or rude or stupid or annoying or badly dressed, no matter how loudly they laugh or slowly they think or quickly they judge, no matter how bad their choices, no matter how cruel their treatment of others, every person is a child of God. And as a child of God, their life is as important as yours.

5) Education is not only about getting a degree so that you can earn a lot of money so that you can buy a nice car and a nice house. Education is about learning how to care: both for people and for the world. Knowledge without good is empty.

6) Serving yourself, in the end, brings little happiness, but serving others and working toward their good brings an overwhelming joy.

7) And, as I told the Current Events class over and over, it is impossible not to change the world. How you change it is up to you.

And so, dear students, go forth, write well, and spread your knowledge and compassion to others. I thank you, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, for your attention, for your kindness, and for your respect. I will miss each one of you and will pray for you often. And, in some way, I will always be…

Your proud teacher,

Michelle