As I spread the thank you’s around this week it would not be fitting if I did not spend a post thanking one of the greatest teachers EVER. J. spent countless hours reviewing my term papers and giving feedback — he helped me to develop both my voice as a writer and a life long love of literature.
In recent years, as I became a teacher myself he because a mentor and friend to swap stories with of the funny happenings that only another teacher would truly appreciate and offer his advice as I struggled through the first several years in the classroom.
My all time favorite piece of advice that he shared, not just with me but with all his students on the first day of class was to not be wordy in your writing, REVISE REVISE REVISE before you turned it in because he had a pile of books sitting in his office so high that it was not possible he was going to get to them all before he died. By his calculations for each student, if they only used 2 more words than necessary it would create a great and horrible impact on his goal to finish those books. So in closing, another big thank you to a teacher’s teacher (and I really really hope this was not wordy).