I feel like I have so much random stuff on my mind. I’ve been trying to focus on what to blog about, and for the last three days I’ve jumped from playgroup topics to exercise topics and now to I guess whatever spills out onto the keyboard. Here goes…
Have you read the book The Sound and the Fury? It is bar-none one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. It was written by William Faulkner and published in 1929. It’s really a truly amazing piece of work. If you haven’t read it, you should.
My eleventh grade Honors English class read The Sound and the Fury toward the end of the school year. Our teacher, Mrs. Morgan, reminded us over and over again that the final exam would be solely based on the novel. She often referred to it as the “final exam from hell” as not many passed it in the history of this specific final exam (which by all counts, had been going on for many years).
I struggled all year long in Mrs. Morgan’s Honors English 11 class. Mrs. Morgan was a phenomenal teacher. She was caring, nurturing, and so strict and scary — all at the same time. I think most people didn’t enjoy their time with her. I loved it. She was, and still is, one of the most influential people in my life.
I don’t know why I loved The Sound and the Fury so much. For whatever reason, I found it to be riveting and fascinating. I was terrified of the upcoming test. But I couldn’t stop reading. And reading ahead of the class. Normally I was falling asleep by the time I was a paragraph onto a page. I loved Thoreau’s Walden, but even that made my eyes heavy. But The Sound and the Fury was something else. I “got it.”
Test time came and went. We finally got our scores. I aced it. I got an A on her “final exam from hell.”
I no longer felt like an idiot, or thought I wasn’t good enough to be in Honors English. My mom, and Mrs. Morgan, always pushed me and I’m glad they did. When it came time to decide whether I would pursue college credit in AP English my senior year, I decided against it. I regret it. I should have pushed myself harder. My priorities were in a much different place than they are today, so at the time it was okay, but I took the easy way out. I shake my head in disappointment at the 17/18 year old version of myself.
Mrs. Morgan wrote me a recommendation letter for college. I applied and was accepted before she was finished with her letter, so I never sent it in. I opened it, read it and have cherished it so much since the day I received it. I look at it every now and again to remind myself of all my accomplishments that year in Mrs. Morgan’s Honors English 11. I hope that her words can continue to carry me through times of self-doubt or pity.
So there’s my stream of consciousness. I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time.
“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth (V.5.26-28).
