You know I love my students. I love teaching writing to my students.

So, you have to know that this person was never one of my students…

The spell check program wouldn’t have caught that. Source: Huffingtonpost.com

…else, she’d know how to spell her curse words correctly.

This reminds me of a message I received from a student almost two years ago who was not satisfied with a grade, and proceeded to call me a ‘birch’ in the message. I don’t know if the student realized what she did, but my dean thought it was interesting.

Speaking of ‘birches’, I am reminded of a class I took long ago, in the early 1980s, at Mississippi State University. It was an advanced English composition class of 12 students, hand-picked for this particular professor. I loved this class. We had an assignment one week to take a piece of classical writing or poetry, and reinterpret it however we liked. The sky was the limit.

I picked Robert Frost’s poem, “Birches.”

I reinterpreted the poem, and retitled it, “Bitches.”

I received an A and a very humorous note back from the professor. He told me he’d never be able to read Robert Frost in the same way again.

I wish I could find it. If I do, I’ll share it.

Categories: Interesting & Odd The Writing Life

Tagged as: Birches Mississippi State University Robert Frost

jsmith532

Professor,
Communication, Arts, and the Humanities
The University of Maryland Global Campus