When our professor at Georgia State University, Dr. Norman Dressel, crisply outlined the requirements of the term paper, he sounded especially forbidding. As he regarded us with his piercing eyes, his summation said it all: “Of course, the content is important, but so is proper form and precise bibliography and annotation.” The dread in the classroom seemed to weight the air.
After the bell, as my classmates filed out mumbling darkly, I recalled another classroom that of Mrs. Ado Coots, the terror of Forsyth County High. I could still picture her neat script in the margins of my English papers, carefully enumerating each of my grammatical shorings in bright blue ink.
“One of these days,” Mrs. Coots was fond of saying, “you students will find that what you’re learning here will be useful.” Few of us believed her, but that didn’ t discourage Mrs. Coots from her relentless drilling in the basics of Englishposition. She was unwavering in her determination that we master the intricacies of the term paper with a proper bibliography. At the slightest protest, Mrs. Coots’s dark eyes flashed. “You will find that the real world is far more demanding than my term papers, but meanwhile they can help prepare you for it!”
I smiled at the memory. Nothing had been more difficult than one of her term papers, not even the prospect of one of Professor Dressel’s. He was a notoriously hard grader, seeming to take particular delight in giving Cs to A students. The next day I threw myself into the paper, working harder on it than any project I could remember.