The Brightest of Bright Moments, Part One
by Steve McGill

Whenever my students ask me how they should start their essays, I usually say start somewhere in the middle, because if you try to start at the beginning, you’ll just sit there. The mind doesn’t work in linearities. It doesn’t think in chronological order. If you try to force it to, it freezes. 

So, with this essay, I’m following my own advice. I’m starting somewhere in the middle. I’ll figure out where I’m going later.

I wouldn’t be writing this essay at all if not for a conversation I had yesterday with two of my AP Lang & Comp students — Piper Pritchard and Adam Rezai. Adam pointed out that I haven’t really shared much about myself on a personal level thus far in the school year, which might sound like a strange thing to say, except for the fact that I had asked the students to share much about themselves in a personal essay assignment I had given the class in September. 

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Let me explain what the assignment entails. I call it the “autobiography essay.” The instructions are to write an essay about your life up to this point, focusing on a specific angle. For 16-year-old juniors in high school, this task sounds like a tall one, and it definitely can be. The specific angle can be anything — life as the oldest/middle/youngest sibling, life as an athlete playing a certain sport for many years, life as the child of divorced parents, etc. Or students could focus on a key relationship in their life, a key turning point in their life, a key memory that has come to define the person they have become. 

In going over the details of what I was looking for, I told the students that because AP Lang is a rhetoric-based course, the essay should be making some kind of claim about life, about humanity, about love or integrity or friendship or any abstract quality. I said the essay should make me care, and to some degree it should make me think and make me feel. “I don’t really know what I want until I see what I want,” I said, because each essay was going to be so personal and so unique to each individual’s experiences and reflections. The essay doesn’t have to be deep, I said. It can be humorous, lighthearted, etc., as long as it’s a genuine reflection of your personality and an authentic, compelling narration of your story. 

Ultimately, I told the students, you have one direct question that your essay needs to address: What do I need to know about you in order to know you? If your essay addresses that question in a clear and direct manner, and perhaps, if relevant, in a courageous and fearless manner, then you will have accomplished what you set out to do. If what you’re writing about is deeply personal, you can trust me not to judge you or anyone else you might talk about in your essay, and you can be sure that no one else will read it except me, if that is what you prefer. 

Until this past September, I hadn’t used this assignment with any of my classes in about fifteen years. It takes a very high level of maturity to write an essay like this one, and it’s been a long while since I’ve taught a class that I felt was mature enough, and talented enough as writers, to take on such an assignment. But in the first month or so of this school year, the 31 students in my two AP Lang sections had impressed me tremendously with their emotional maturity, their intellectual capacities, and their overall respect for the written word. With narrative writing being our focal point for the first quarter of the first semester, I had the students read, among other content, personal essays written by myself and two colleagues — Jenn Shiley and Jill Cope — in a substack that Shiley had started over the summer. In one of Shiley’s essays, she wrote about losing her sister to cancer when her sister was still a young woman in her late 20s. In one of mine, I wrote about fighting back from blood clots and a diabetes diagnosis last spring. Jill wrote about getting lost in the desert during a solo adventure while vacationing with her family. All of these essays were very personal, and the students not only analyzed them very well, but also honored each of us with thoughtful comments and questions. Shiley and Jill both came and talked to both sections of the class on separate days, and those interactions between my students and my colleagues were highlights of the year and of my career. 

So when it came time to choose between assigning the autobiography essay vs. sticking with the traditional lesson plan I had used in past years, I decided to take the leap and pull the autobiographical essay out from the closet. It had been so long since I’d used it that I had to create the rubric all over again, as I couldn’t find the old one in any of my files. Also, I couldn’t find any old examples. I had lost touch with all students from way back when, except for a few on Instagram. One, named Kasey Fuscoe, had written the best essay I had ever read for this assignment. She had written about her parents’ divorce, emphasizing the effects of living with her mother after the divorce while her sister lived with their father. She introduced each section of the essay with a song lyric that hinted at the theme of that section. Such a creative way of structuring the essay, and the content itself was breathtaking. With my current group of students, I was hoping to receive more essays on that level. But there were no guarantees. There was the very real possibility that raising this assignment from the grave would prove to be a big mistake. But I believed in these kids, so it was a chance I was willing to take. 

Long story short, this set of essays proved to be the best set of student essays I’ve ever read in a career that spans 30 years, and it’s not even close. I was hoping to get one essay as good as Kasey’s; I’d say about 20 of the 31 of them were as good or better. Though these kids have access to all they could ask for materially, they are not living in a euphoric paradise. I read essays about lost loved ones, debilitating illnesses and injuries, mental health issues, dysfunctional families, self-harm, self-destructive choices, and many other topics that were riveting and impactful. Nobody wrote a cheeseball essay, nobody completed the assignment just to get it done. Everybody dug deep and wrote from a place of sincerity. Never have I felt more proud, or more validated, or more connected with a group of students. 

Those kids poured out the contents of their souls in those essays. And now Piper and Adam, in our conversation yesterday, were asking me to do the same. I thought I had already done so in the substack essays I had shared with them. But those essays, I had to admit, didn’t answer the essential question: what do they need to know in order to know me? None of my substack essays answered that question, and I knew it.

Earlier in the day yesterday, I had gone on a short walk with one of my colleagues in the English department, Kevin Julian. During our walk we talked about the question of how much of our personal lives is appropriate to share with our students. I said that the more mature the kids are, the more real we can be with them. Never, I advised, share anything personal with students who won’t appreciate it or respect it on the level at which you present it. But if the maturity level is high, then sharing personal stuff, as long as it’s relevant to the course, can be hugely beneficial in helping to form bonds with students that will last a lifetime and even beyond the span of a lifetime. I’ve said to this group of students on more than one occasion that we only have this short period of time together; only for this one year will we meet together on a regular basis as a group. We have to make the most of our time. In talking with Kevin, I realized that with these Lang students I was teaching, I not only could feel safe opening up to them, but based on the essays they had written, I had an obligation to open up to them. 

So after the short but deep talk with Piper and Adam, I thought to myself that I should probably tell my Lang classes the story of when I was diagnosed with the rare blood disease aplastic anemia at the age of 17 in my senior year of high school. I’m old enough now that there are other stories besides that one that address the question of what people need to know about me in order to know me. But that one is the one that started it all, that started me on my spiritual path and opened windows of perception that enabled me to know what it feels like to be in love with the world. I had told my aplastic anemia  story a few times over the course of my career to classes I trusted with it. But in thinking about it more last night and into this morning, I felt that just talking about it and telling the story verbally would be kind of a weak move. I had asked my students to write their stories, so I should reciprocate by writing mine. 

As I thought about it some more, I decided I would find an essay I’ve written in the past, as I have written often, and lengthily, about my battle with aplastic anemia, my miraculous recovery, and my three-week stay at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that has guided the rest of my life. But even digging up an old essay, I had to admit, felt like a shortcut. I had to write a whole new one, based on the perspective I have now, and based on the relationship I’ve developed with these students, and based on the deep trust we have placed in each other. This is a special group, so that means I am required to be a special teacher. The old rule of keeping everything inside the box doesn’t apply with this bunch. I have to challenge myself like I challenged them. So here I am.

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