*You’ve written me two recommendation letters so far. This is sort of mine for you.*
Dear Mr. Herrman,
I’m still mad at you.
But this ‘open letter’ isn’t about The News in the Gas Station (although you can guarantee it will come up). This is my thank-you letter.
I should probably save this for when I finally leave UACCM. But it’s been a week since the conference, and I’ve found myself still full-to-bursting with emotion.
Since this is a blog post, all of you readers who are not Mr. Herrman need a little backstory.
In. the fall of 2018, I enrolled in a Communications class and prepared to learn how to be a better public speaker. Oh honey, was I mistaken.
Don’t get me wrong, I think I’m a better public speaker after the class. But that isn’t the main thing I got out of being in Mr. Herrman’s Introduction to Oral Communications class. Some of the lessons I learned are as follows (and no, I’m sorry, I’m not going to be able to list all the theories and chart-things we looked at).
Humility.
I made my first B on a test in your class. Then I made my first C. While I can partially blame these grades on my involvement in a play that was a horrible mistake, I should also blame it on my grievous lack of studying. During these tests, you also had us starting research on a project I didn’t fully understand until literally two weeks before the end of the semester.
A few weeks into class, I finally gave in and went to see you to ask what the heck you wanted from me on these assignments.
I said my uncomfortable ‘hello how are you’ and explained that I needed some clarification. You responded you’d be happy to help and then brought up the very thing I was praying you wouldn’t.
You grimaced (or smiled, it was hard to tell in the moment), and gently shoved me off the edge of the cliff I had been teetering on. “Those test scores, though…”
I curled up and died inside and made some sort of wild promise about getting A’s or not doing quite as terribly in the future.
I can’t remember exactly what you said in response, but you let it go. Honestly, my mild social anxiety cannot thank you enough for that. You looked at my research and re-explained the assignment.
I also learned humility in a different way on that first test. We’d had an essay question, and I had picked some minor theological disagreement I’d been having with some friends as my example. I was nervous as to what you would think about it, seeing as how I referenced religion. I’d heard horror stories of students being given F’s for breathing in the direction of Christianity.
When I got my essay back, I was thrilled to see a 19 out of 20. I was not thrilled to find myself unable to see any marks to explain the deducted point.
I pulled my meager supply of courage together once again and came up to you after class. I asked about my error so I could avoid it in the future.
With all the pleasantness in the world, you blew apart the foundations of my perfectionist life.
“Oh, I don’t give out perfect scores on things like this.”
I hope I made some sense but I don’t remember how I responded. I’m not sure if I was furious or terrified. Probably both. But at least you were honest with me, which brings me to my next ‘lesson.’
Honesty.
I’m not saying I’m a liar, but something that struck me about you (particularly on this last trip to Oklahoma) is how honest you are.
More specifically, how honest you are without being overly unkind or sickly sweet.
When our group went outside after Michael and I gave our speeches, you started off with a run-down of the things I could have done better.
I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t want to hear it. I was aggravated, and I just wanted you to stop talking. It felt embarrassing to listen to your critiques in front of the other teacher and students (maybe I should have put this story in the “humility” section).
Everything you said was right, of course. They were things I had already thought to myself.
But the Lord convicted me of my attitude (I vividly remember praying for humility), and He helped me really listen to what you were saying. More importantly, He helped me listen to how you were saying it.
It was kind. You didn’t pull punches, you pointed out how repetitive I was and how my first citation left some things to be desired, but you did it all without attacking me. Thank you for that.
Thank you for also telling me what I did well. Thank you for being fully honest with me and giving me feedback both negative and positive. You’re very good at using those two aspects of critique, and I hope I’ll be able to learn that skill someday.
Now I desperately want to write The News Incident in the Gas Station, but it will take too long because I want to be really dramatic and petty about it. I’ll just put it in the next post.
Moving on.
Confidence
I could go into the whole Phi Theta Kappa speech thing, but honestly, as I mentioned, I have a whole other post in the works. Suffice to say, God has probably used you more than any person outside my family to help me believe I should try things or go after something I want.
That fall, you asked me to compete. Asked me. When I had stumbled through research assignments and changed my project a half-dozen times in three weeks, you still asked me to compete.
Then, after the speech, while I was waiting to hear the results and you already knew them, you told me you were proud of me.
That, honestly, means just as much to me as winning did.
I’m a people-pleaser, and that’s a trait I’m working on balancing in my life.
You know so much about public speaking and communicating. Heck, you were in charge of the whole shee-bang. I can’t even imagine how many students have gone through your classes.
I’ve struggled for a long time with my hobbies or interests. I normally get compliments for things I don’t value or care about nearly as much as others, and I ended up coming to belief those other, more important-to-me-things were things I wasn’t good at.
You turned that whole line of thinking on its head.
For almost the first time in my life, I was good at something I wanted to be good at. Not something I had to be good at, or didn’t have to actually try to be good at.
No, I had given a good speech. I had done good research. I had cited my sources well, just like you taught me.
As you know, it was that trip to Oklahoma that God used to spark the idea of continuing my education and changing what I wanted in terms of a career. It was that trip, I’m now seeing, that taught me:
Hope.
Aside from a kindergarten basketball team, I never played sports. Winning Best Delegate at a Model UN conference was basically not going to happen. So I didn’t really realize how competitive I was.
Okay, that’s sort of a lie.
This semester, as I waited for this recent PTK conference, I re-framed my competitiveness. Normally, in life, if I am not completely certain I will succeed in something, I won’t do it. This ranges from college classes to guessing the murderer on a procedural cop drama.
Yes, alright, I’m competitive and a perfectionist and have very unhealthy habits.
But this was different. I didn’t want to win just because I didn’t want to fail. I wanted to win because I genuinely thought I had a chance. Like, a good chance. I wanted to win because I had proved myself once before, and now I knew how to play the game.
For better or worse, this was the first time I realized how addictive winning is. I wanted to go to this conference and win the competition. Then, now, I want to go to Catalyst and win the competition and you know the best part?
It isn’t even because of the scholarship money. It isn’t because of the ‘commemorative pin.’
It’s because I’m not bad at this. It’s because I truly believe I have the ability to win.
This is because of you.
See, as you know, I want to be a teacher (a college professor to be specific). A large part of that desire grew out of the incredible teachers I have had. My mother, my business instructors, you, and others. I have watched, almost as though I was outside of myself, the impact you’ve all had on my confidence and outlook on life.
God has used you as an answer to a prayer I’ve been praying for these last three years.
Help me stop despairing at the idea of living any longer. Give me hope.
He’s used your encouragement and honesty to convince me that I am capable of doing what I’ve set out to do, whatever that ends up looking like. God is good, and He fulfills His promises. He has started a good work in me, and He will carry it on to completion. Whether that is teaching at a college or raising kids or all or none of the above, the very fact that I’m excited about what the future holds is a blessing I will never be able to measure.
This is a thank you letter. It’s probably not the last one I’ll write to you. But I wanted to write this out for you to see. For all the teasing we gave you about the difficulty of your class, you really are, in my mind, a great teacher. I learned so much from your class and from you, and I tell almost every student I meet that they need to take your class (I also tell them you are actually really nice and they should ignore anything they’ve heard to the contrary).
Thank you for teaching me.
-Sarah
Sarah Standard Version 