Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Robert De Niro = Paul Gasparo's stunt double

For days, weeks even, I had been wondering who is this Paul Gasparo? Is he an old, stale, washed up English professor? Is he going to be an asshole? Is this class going to be hard? Why in the hell am I in school again?! An entire gambit of thoughts raging through my brain.

Class is at 7:15 p.m. and being the studious brain child I am, I decide to get there 45 minutes early, to ensure my seat up front. Of course when I get there it is vacant because most people have better things to do than to show up 45 minutes early to class. Luckily my roommate is taking a math class in the same building as I am in and was about to get out. I tossed my books on the front row desk as close as I could get to the teacher (because I’m a kiss ass), and I strolled out into the hallway. I’ve got my eye open the whole time for Mike and also anyone I might think resembles what I could conjure up to be a Paul Gasparo. I stop at a fountain for some cool refreshing city water and Mike steps out of class.

“You’re here early?” he says.

“Wanted to make sure I could find the class alright.” I reply, as if the building is really that big.

Right about that same moment this guy walks by pulling one of those box-on-wheels things and Mike looks at me and says ,“Was that Robert De Niro?” and I said “Yes, I do believe it was De Niro. I think he’s teaching classes at TCC these days...” Well, it was not Robert De Niro. Not at all. It was someone far more famous. The man we saw was Paul Gasparo, my English 111 instructor and I could tell he meant business.

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Day one was like any other day one at school. Teacher introduces himself, students introduce themselves, so forth and so on. Primitive but effective meet and greet. As the days progressed so did the assignments. Most of them were pretty easy because the instructor spelled out everything he expected in an assignment prompt. These were absolutely fantastic, they are like blueprints for the assignment. They answer every question the student could possibly have. 

Then came the argument essay assignment extravaganza. An ongoing catastrophic event that started on day one of class and won’t end until I’m 50 years old, I think. The best part of the assignment was being able to pick your own topic, and I had a real great one in mind. So I tell Paul my topic he said no to it and that it was garbage, in so many words. My first reaction to this news was “fuck it” I’m dropping this class, but then I thought “if you drop this class because of that you’ll feel like a dumbass about it for a long time.”  What I ended up doing was meeting with Paul in the writing center to discuss a new topic, and we came up with a real whopper: unions. Yea, fucking unions. I sucked it up and did the thing and ended up doing fairly well on it.  I’m glad I stuck it out.

This is just for me: English 111 is one of the best classes I have ever taken. Paul is borderline prick, but he’s consistent and I like that, he’s real. I believe a good class is always indicative of a great teacher. Students are not going to just skate through Paul’s class. They will work, and through the adversities and triumphs of this work they will learn. A guy in jail once said to me “Your best thinking got you right here, behind some walls, so what the fuck do you know...” I don’t know a whole lot, but I can tell you I’m sure as hell glad there are people like Paul Gasparo that are willing to teach a hard head like me, it’s a tough job and I commend him. 

2 comments:

  1. I think this is one of the funniest course responses ever. DeNiro. Old or young DeNiro?

    And I should stop using Pierre's blog as an example.

    And I cannot believe you almost dropped. I'm glad you did not.

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  2. haha! "Paul is a borderline prick"! Love it!

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