I remember my
fourth grade year as if it were yesterday. My homeroom teacher, Mr. Anderson,
would stand at
the front of the
room each morning at 9:15, and wait patiently for us to say the Pledge of
Allegiance. Then, like
clockwork, at
exactly 9:17, as my class of 28 sat down, he would set up a magic trick,
pretending each day that
something was
going wrong during the set-up. As Mr. Anderson did this, he would often tell us
a story that in
some way or
another related to the magic trick he showed us. Then, as he finished the
trick, he would tell us the
moral to the
story.
Now a days I
don't have someone there for me constantly saying what I should or should not
do. I often find
myself in
situations in which I must be the one to decide if, for instance, I should go
to a party or to the bars, or
stay home and
concentrate on the massive amounts of homework that have piled up. It is at
times like these
when Mr.
Anderson's words of advice float though my head. The one I hear Mr. Anderson
saying most often
in the back of my
mind is one that, until now, I always thought he created. I say this because
all of the other
morals were
obvious ones that, if I had not already heard, I eventually came to hear quite
often. Until I actually
went through the
list of quotes at the back of the play Hamlet, I automatically assumed that Mr.
Anderson was a
genius. For I am
taling about the line, "brevity is the soul of wit," in which
Polonius is talking to the King and
Queen.
When I see
"brevity is the soul of all wit," I translate it into Mr. Anderson's
words: "Brevity is the heart of
success." As
a fourth grader, this was difficult for me to understand. I would listen to
each moral, and
memorize each one
with such determination, that sometimes that is all that I did: Memorize. I
never really took
the time to study
these quotes. Now that I am older, many times I find myself referring to these
words of
wisdom with a new
outlook that I truly understand them.
As I wrote my
college essay, I came to understand that admissions counselors were not going
to want to read
papers that were
four typed pages long. I realized that it was possible to write an essay, get
across my point,
and keep the
paper within two typed pages. It was then that it cam to me. Mr. Anderson was
trying to say that if
you do a task
with all of your effort, it does not matter the length. A three page paper that
answers a question is
better than a
five page paper that goes on and on about nothing.
Now that I think
about it, it isn't that ironic that Mr. Anderson knew that quote. After all,
english teachers are
required to take
Shakespeare courses in college. What is humorous though, is that it took me
eight years to
realize his moral
was taken from one of the greatest play-writes of all time. From now on,
whenever I think of
the quote
"brevity is the soul of all wit," not only will I think of Mr.
Anderson, but of the play Hamlet as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment