The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

38 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 3 The Unwanted Student By Hannah David Hannah David is a college senior with a double major in Journalism and Political Science. She is the honored mother of seven-year-old Bella. Hannah is a classically trained dancer. She dedicated over a decade to the performing arts as a professional actress and ballerina before leaving her home state of Hawaii to attend college. Hannah has always valued writing, and she enjoys using her life experiences as the foundation of her literary craft. I wouldn’t say that I’m the best wordsmith, but I know that I can manage pretty well. I have always loved words and their meanings, so being able to spell and pronounce words correctly has great significance to me. I attended a private school from kindergarten to the tenth grade. I truly resented going to school, and I felt like my teachers took for granted my need to trust them with my vulnerable yet teachable mind. Though I longed to be, I wasn’t a particularly academic child. I did, however, enjoy words and spelling. Perhaps I gauged my intellect by my ability to spell better than most of the older kids that I knew in school. Perhaps I wanted to be recognized as a bright and valuable child with limitless potential, not as a hopeless one. Or, perhaps I just never wanted to experience the embarrassing humiliation and sadness that I consistently experienced in first grade under the direction of Miss Radin, my school teacher. Quite the Southern Bell, Miss Radin; a petite, young, and very single, fire-cracker, frizzy haired, overly modest, but not too bad looking, busy-bodied, elementary school teacher, recently transplanted from Greenville, South Carolina’s bachelor ridden Bob Jones’ University to “educate and save” the heathen childrenofKauai’sNorthShore. You’re thinking right about nowthat the only thing this little woman is missing is her broomstick. Well, I’m sure she had one of those too. At this academy administrators and educators were still permitted to strike their pupils dare we