Afer complenting my first two years of college in a tiny junior college in
Kentucky, I enrolled in Illinois State University, confident that I would well,
because I haad sone well in the past. The size of the place was a bit daunting.
The first challenge was finding a parking space. Where before I had parked ion a
tree-lined street and walked the short distance to the main calssroom building
at Bthel junior College, now I was confronted with acres of parking spaces which
seemed miles from the classroom buildings. Classes were not just up one hall or
down the next, as I had grown increasingly oneous. Unike Southerners who greet
everyone, including strangers, with Hey! people rarely spoke. On a campus of
over 10,000 students, I felt completely salone. Years later, as a graduate
student at increasingly larger schools, I recalled feelings overwhelmed by the
size and (seeming) indifference of ISC. One defining moment got me off to a
terrible start, adn I never recovered. During my very first class at Illinois, I
walked into a classroom and took a desk among thirty other students. After the
instructor, a thin, balding male, called roll, he looked up adn asked, Is there
anyone whose name I didn't call?
I put up my hand, and he walked over to my seat. What is your name? he asked,
pencil poised to write. Cindy Horne, I replied. How do you spell that? he asked.
H-a-w-e-r-n? No, sir. 'H-o-r-n-e, I replied. H-o-r-n-e? he repeated. Yes, sir.
then your name is not'Hawern, he mimicked. Your name is 'Horne,' he said,
barking it out in one short, explosive syllable, a way I had never heard. The
other students laughed, and he turned and walked to the front of the class. But
my face flushed deep scarlet, and my eyes dropped to my notebook. For a long
time, I did not look up but fought back tears adn retreated somewhere inside a
feeling that I was completely out of place. What might for him have merely been
an innocent attempt at humor by poking fun at a Southerner to break the ice of
the first-day jitters, deeply humiliated me. I must REALLY be stupid, I thought,
to not even know how to pronounce my own name! Today, I would pronbley laugh.
Then, I was deeply ashaned. I never finished class. I dropped out of the
university before the term was over. i suddenly felt inadequate, and no amount
of study restored my confiednce. Two years later, I returned to Kentucky,
enrolled in a small liberal arts college, completed my bachelor's degree, and
wernt on to become an art teacher. I had many good teachers, but I learned a
great lesson from that insentive man with the roll book, a lesson which has
helped shape my educaitonal philosophy. I am glad I learned that lesson, even if
it was painful at the time. It's has made me a better person.
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