A Short Bio

For the creative writing class that I took a couple of months ago, we were asked to write a short bio to introduce ourselves. I decided I didn’t want to just start with “My name is Mike, and I teach high school social studies.” That’s too normal. But what I did write surprised me a bit. People don’t generally introduce themselves by discussing failures with complete strangers. That’s exactly what I started my bio with…a story about myself that I’ve (oddly enough) never written about. Here’s what I wrote.

One of the requirements for finishing my MA in History in 2007 was the successful completion of both comprehensive written and oral exams. The written exam went off without a hitch. The oral exam…not so much. As my professor was explaining his reasoning for failing me (and explaining that I was going to have to do this all over again), he said, “Mike, you’re a much better writer than you are speaker.” That’s not really something that a history teacher wants to hear.

All these years later, I do think my professor was trying to let me down easy, even if he had a funny way of doing it. For my part, once I got over my bitterness, I realized that he may have been on to something, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself at the time. Sometimes lessons take a while to learn.

The rest of my bio was standard fare about my family, how long I’ve been teaching, hobbies, etc. Looking back at what I wrote, I’m still not sure why I chose to share that particular story. Probably because it was a writing class.

That failure of my oral exam definitely took my ego down a few notches, which was probably a good thing. And I really was bitter about it for a while. Instead of focusing on my professor complementing my writing, I focused on his criticism of my speaking, and I let it eat at me for longer than I’d like to admit.

Here’s the thing: He was right. I’m really not a good extemporaneous speaker. I do much better if I have some type of plan or outline of what I need to say. For my oral exams, I tried to wing it, and it didn’t work out. Once I practiced and worked through my answers more thoroughly, I passed the second time around without any problems.

Once I got over myself, I decided to try focusing on my writing a little at a time. That’s when, for better or worse, I originally started my blog. I guess I’m just a little slow at taking advice sometimes.