Praise God from whom all blessings flow for the heavenly goodness in your every bite. Who can warm my heart like you do? Macaroni and cheese, food above all foods. I say your name as if I’m reading a book to a group of Kindergarteners and I’ve just gotten to the most exciting part. Big smile, raised eyebrows, sparkle in my eyes.

But why you? Why now? Why the insane (but flattering) obsession?

It seems that my arch nemesis Evil Change is making yet another appearance in the comic book of my life. You remember Evil Change. He wears that crazy super-villain costume with the sequence tornado (No Capes!). He’s the party pooper usually lingering around graduations, weddings, going away festivities.

He enjoys small-scale attacks on children and the elderly, but is most commonly found besieging adultish Type A personalities. He can easily recognize them with his super-human radar that hones in on people who have more Excel spreadsheets than iTunes songs. People who are more likely to show off their PALM tx’s (which I’m sooo getting when I return to The Land of Plenty) than their own children.

Well, he must have pinpointed an inordinate number of lists, labels, and color-coded calendar items coming from my residence because he has flown in and caused quite a stir.

He has single-handedly transformed Fun!Cool! Amber into Crazy Amber. Fun!Cool! Amber is ok with change. She is superb at packing and organizing. She loves to check-off items on her To Do list, and she creates the perfect “Nine Hours on a Plane” playlist for her listening pleasure. She accepts change. She sometimes even delights in it—like adding corn to her salad or rearranging the furniture.

Meet Crazy Amber. She is not ok with change. When Evil Change crashes into her world, she transforms into a schizo compilation of all seven dwarfs. You never know when sublimely-Happy will turn into get-out-of-my-life-Grumpy or when ignorant-Dopey will become all-knowing-Doc. She does not accept change. She abruptly shifts between denial-anger-elation-shock-depression-bliss-lather-rinse-repeat. It’s not a pretty cycle.

Instead of the traditional therapies one might seek—journaling, shopping, meditating—I, Crazy Amber, have chosen you. Macaroni and Cheese. You never let me down. You are my constant. Joy in a bowl, smothered in processed cheese.

Comfort foods can be so cliché. Aww, you’re sick = chicken noodle soup. That fool broke up with you?! = One gallon of Double Fudge Brownie ice cream. Got some bad news about Grandpa = a cup of coffee. First time spending the night away from Mommy and Daddy = Oreos and milk. The team lost the big game = lots and lots of pizza and beer.

Macaroni and cheese has always been the answer for me. You’ve always been there. Elementary school every Thursday with two little smokies (Yeah, just two! Rip. Off. (P.S. Thank you Samantha Watts for thinking they were too greasy and always giving me yours)). At least once a week my mother made a big pot of it for dinner–with cut up hotdogs because we are cultured like that. It was a necessary nutrient on my plate every Sunday at Luby’s All-You-Can-Eat Cafeteria. One time Xboyfriend had his grandma make it from scratch just for me. And a definite college survival food…God Bless Sam’s Club for carrying it in bulk.

Remembering my first few hours in Mali when I was FreakedOut Amber, I vividly recall warm sensations of home coming from a packet of Easy Mac. When my friend Jenny arrived here without a clue–as most missionaries do–I pulled out the Kraft. On my brother’s first night here, we both cried over a hot bowl of cheesy noodly deliciousness.

And now, as our cupboards are nearly bare after giving it all away, I see 2 boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. I see comfort. I see hope for Crazy Amber. I will defeat Evil Change. One bowl at a time.

Candy corn and Peeps. My precious mangoes. The World Series. Santa Clause and twinkle lights. Porter Peach Festival. Candles on a cake. Bath and Body Works Big Sale.

They only come around once a year. And we fall in love.

They are not the ordinary, everyday, humdrum treadmill of our existence. They’re the prize in the cereal box. The reason we have calendars. Sublime happiness!

And on my list of seasonal favorites, you, research paper, are at the top. Above the other writing assignments, you reign supreme. With all of the book reports and short stories and poetry finally finished for the year, it’s time to unveil you in all your glory! You are the paper I wait all year for my students to experience!

How can I put this in practical terms for the “normal” folks to understand?
Like Hallmark and Mother’s Day.
Like big screen TV’s and the Superbowl.
Like tornado chasers and Oklahoma summers.
Like H&R Block and April.

It’s research paper time, and I’m like a coach before the big game. I open my lesson plan book—just as complex and mysterious as a playbook—and see today’s objective: Write Research Paper. (If the box were any bigger, I’d describe you more accurately: Learn how to write the one document that will change life forever.) I begin the warm-up, making copies of the handouts and checking off the necessary supplies. Note cards, check. Highlighters, check. Rubrics, check.

A sense of purpose comes over me. This is what I was born to teach.

We go back a long way. Fourth grade. Mrs. Griggs. The Pioneer unit. (She must have noticed how Oregon Trail had completely consumed our computer time each day.) Each student could sign up for one project: sew a pioneer quilt, make original pioneer food, construct a covered wagon, make a pioneer board game, or research pioneers. Nearly every girl chose the quilt and every boy the covered wagon. A few oddballs chose the other tasks, although I hope today they’re not blogging about their passion for pioneer food or board games.

I alone chose research. We’ve been best friends ever since.

And now as a teacher I get to grade piles and piles of you! Some may find it tiring, monotonous. What? How else can one learn about topics like knights, the Great Blue Turaco, the Danish Resistance, poverty, the death penalty, and NASCAR in one sitting? I’m an instant expert (on the middle-high school level) on all of these subjects, thanks to you, beloved research paper.

What’s not to love about you? The Purdue Online Writing Lab describes you as “a living thing, which grows and changes as the student explores, interprets, and evaluates sources related to a specific topic” (Hamid and Baker). Like ice cream, you come in different flavors: argumentative, analytical, compare/contrast. Like fine wine, you take time to develop (Nine 45-minute class periods). Like a good book, you tell a story. Unlike sports, one doesn’t have to have a natural ability, you can be learned. And your strongest appeal: as opposed to life, you are controllable.

I’m sorry for the groans of my students on Day 1 of Research Paper Unit. They don’t have the fond college memories of late nights with you, writing red-eyed and face buried in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. They don’t know the fulfillment of a perfectly placed paraphrase or a flawless Works Cited page. No, they don’t smile when they say Thesis Statement.

But they will learn. I will teach them of your power, your beauty. I hope they will never again see you as my own personal torture device, a dreaded assignment that is the inevitable means to an end (read—passing my class).

If after my 12 Steps for Writing the Perfect Research Paper they still hate you, well, it’s not your fault. Your presence in their lives will only heighten as the years go by. And maybe by the time they pen their doctoral thesis, you’ll finally be the twinkle in their eye, instead of the twitch.

Your biggest super-nerd fan,
Amber

Works Cited
Hamid, Sarah, and Baker, Jack Raymond. “Genre and the Research Paper.” 29 November 2007. OWL at Purdue. 21 May 2008. <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/02>.

Whether it was prompted by a chalkboard full of quotations to memorize or a chunky piece of Hemingway to digest, you have all asked, “Miss Flindt, why do we have to learn this?”

“It’ll be on the test,” I respond automatically.

You believe me. You trust that there will indeed be a test that measures all the bites of knowledge I have forced down your throats. With full bellies, you await that one opportunity to regurgitate everything into perfect ABCD bubbles, carefully darkened in by your number two pencils.

But as of this week you have finished those tests.  All objections of perjury and misconduct may now be raised. Where were the questions about the tormented life of e.e. cummings, the creation stories of the Cherokee, or the resonating themes of The Crucible?

It’s true, I have broken one of the Teacher Rules.  You are certainly familiar with The Rules since the better part of your life has been spent in school. They state some basic guidelines like one must own an embroidered denim jumper and/or seasonal vest. No, not Miss Flindt! Trust me, given time even I will succumb.

We also strictly follow The Rule to conspire with other teachers in aligning all tests, projects, and major assignments to fall on or around the same date. Vicious, I know. This is to prepare you for college when professors will even scheme with the organizers of social events to ensure that in a single weekend you will write a paper, meet for a group project, make a PowerPoint presentation, read a large amount of small text, and still manage to drive five hours for a Dave Matthews concert.

These are just samples of the Written Rules. The trickier Unwritten Rules are the ones I tend to break. One Rule maintains that I must Teach to The Test. Just mumbling that phrase in any circle of educators ignites tempers and commences the rampaging. Sadly, my students, you’ve remained ignorant of the inner workings of these very important Tests. In some states, a teacher’s reputation, salary, or job depends on your score. Soon the media receives the report and begins painting their portrait of teachers, revealing to the public who we really are: a bunch of colorful pie charts and percentages accompanied by terms like stanine and norm-referenced assessment. They will see Pass or Fail, Qualified or Unqualified, Achieving or Needing Improvement (Thank you, NCLB).

All gibberish to you. Your Portrait of English is sketched with different strokes: filming scenes of To Kill A Mockingbird…transforming the room into a Harlem Renaissance Museum…dramatically reciting Patrick Henry monologues…creating a giant map of Fitzgerald’s East and West Egg…

Yes, I was aware all along that The Test wouldn’t encompass these things. I knew it only assessed the more annoying parts English—the  ones taught in our beloved 1988 Heath Grammar book. Does resentment overwhelm you at the thought of this? Have I lost all favor in your eyes? Read on, dear ones, for the following is what I deem test worthy and all I’ve hoped for you this year:

You learned as Gatsby taught of wealth and Scout of prejudice. You observed as Thoreau revealed the joys of simplicity and Hawthorne the consequences of hypocrisy. Your attentive ears absorbed Dickinson’s buzzing fly and Poe’s rapping raven. From now on, you will hold tightly to the revolt of Mother and the song of Whitman. As you travel, you will hear the South screaming Flannery O’Connor and New England whispering Robert Frost. Every third Monday in January, you’ll recall “Letter in a Birmingham Jail,” perhaps indulge in some Langston Hughes, and no doubt write something brilliant.

You see, it will be on the test.  Just not the one you had in mind.

Love,

Miss Flindt

As far as I’m concerned you’re the white jersey team who just lost to the red jersey team, so I won’t pretend I really know you. However, you mean a lot to my roommate-brother, which is why I tolerated watching the final half hour of your French-narrated soccer game. My vote was for Season 3 Disc 2 of House. I’m sorry for your public humiliation. Apparently the general expectation was for another W (please pronounce “dub-eh-yah” for full effect). But in an attempt to console you and my roommate-brother, here are some universal words of encouragement:

• “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Although he sometimes substituted don’t for doesn’t, my dad uttered these words nearly every time my brother or I hurt ourselves. It really made us reflect on what we had done, and in the end we were thanking him for asking us that deep, rhetorical question.
• “No tears! Go shake their hands.” To a squad of shocked and sobbing girls, our coach repeated this to us until we obeyed, stubbornly shaking the hands of the Hawaii team raising the bigger trophy. Good sportsmanship is vital. As is repressing your emotions. Though she did allow us to purchase and then relentlessly torture a Hawaiian Barbie doll on the ride home.
• “Don’t come crying to me!” Every parent, teacher, babysitter, older sibling, school bus driver, and nun has barked this at an unsuspecting youngster. It is, of course, inevitably followed by the four most assuaging words in the English language: I told you so. (Common variations include “Don’t say I didn’t warn you” and occasionally the softened version “I hate to say I told you so”.)
• “What’d you do wrong?” As one who instinctively poses this question to my brother after his screw ups, I cannot emphasize enough what a valuable tool this is in the encouragement tool box. It allows the loser to shift the blame from himself, thus creating a diversion from the pain of losing.
• “It’s just a game.” What a great way of bringing perspective to something you could’ve possibly blown way out of proportion! This type of encouragement gently reminds the loser that all of their preparation was meaningless, their hopes in vain, and the biggest event of their life only a passing vapor of nothingness. (Acceptable adaptations–It’s just a(n)…grade, recital, race, award, job, spouse, incredibly large sum of money).
• “I understand,” or “I feel your pain.” With sober eyes and a sincere tone, this single phrase of empathy will surely enable them to feel at peace. Being understood is the cry of every heartbroken loser, and you can only strengthen their spirits by using this consolation. Tip: Share a story about a similar (or completely dissimilar) experience you have had or seen on TV!

So team in the white jerseys from somewhere in England, may these snippets of support dissuade all of that negativity you might be confronted with. And when that fails, draw embarrassing French mustaches over their scummy Scouser mouths.

Better luck next time, There’s always tomorrow, Keep your heads up, Get over it,

Amber