Tim Bascom's piece, "Community College", has a strange, but very solid structure in the form of a consistent time lapse: each week in the semester of the writing course being taught has its own small entry, with a first person point of view. The characters and their traits emerge solely from the teacher's observations, with little direct personal or emotional reaction in it. Comically, nearly all of the students in his class skip on work and class, but their excuses flesh out the lives of those otherwise purely delinquent students: Arlene disappears from class after having attended a beauticians course, Sara has migraines and a mule and decides to write about the mule, and many other students use these strange but interesting factors in their lives to ditch lectures and turn work in late. The character of the narrator himself comes through his stoic narration, rarely displaying offense or frustration towards his delinquent students, even being invested in their lives and their complications. Yet the story closes with Dan, the blind but hard-working student who receives a scholarship and thanks the teacher for helping him earn it. The story ends on a positive note with a student who makes all of the annoyances of community college teaching worthwhile.
-Tomas F.
Thomas-
ReplyDeleteI liked how you said "the characters and their traits emerge solely from the teacher's observations," I too liked that about this story. I liked how the reader did not give too much away but picked and choose what he was going to say about eanch student. I liked this story and thought about when I was at communtiy college and even in a few of my semesters at mason I would come up with silly reasons to skip class. I thought this reading was also great.
Ashley