How I Became a Wordsmith
By Mary A. Flowers
I was on my way to meet with my Art History Professor to talk about my recent paper. I didn't know what to expect. I had not done too well on my first paper. As I sat down in his office he said, "You're a wordsmith like me, aren't you?" I had no idea what he meant by that. He went on to say, "I like your paper very much. It is different; unlike any paper ever written in my class. It is unique." Needless to say, I felt an immense weight taken off my shoulders. I just hoped that meant I got an "A" on the paper.

He explained that he had a love affair with words – how they fit together and how he tried to find the exact word to match his meaning. I sort of knew this from his lectures since he often went off on a tangent about a particular word and its origins. To me it was fascinating. He said, "You must have had some pretty good teachers along the way." That got me to thinking about some of the teachers from my early schooldays.

I remembered Mrs. Bishop, the teacher I had for both 5th and 6th grades at a small country school in Roanoke, Texas. She was very particular about syllabing (dividing a word into its syllables) and assigned students 25 words a week to syllabicate, write the meaning of each word, and then write two sentences using each word. Needless to say, you would pretty much know each word by the time each exercise was done!

After the 6th grade we moved to the city and I attended North Richland Hills Junior High. I was lucky enough to have Mrs. Phelps for 8th Grade Grammar. She made this class enjoyable and this much-beloved teacher had a way of keeping us young kids interested.

Then in 10th Grade at Richland High School I had Mr. Moseley. He was the teacher who taught us to write. We wrote essays, term papers, and paragraphs throughout the school year. We particularly enjoyed squaring off for sentence diagramming matches. It was sort of like a spelling bee but our goal was to stump the opposing team. We spent a lot of time trying to craft a sentence they couldn't figure out.

In the 12th grade I had Mrs. Averill for English Literature. She was one of the nicest teachers I ever had. I never did well on tests so sometimes I had a hard time getting the "A" I wanted. Mrs. Averill had a system of giving extra points for finding particular words used in newspaper or magazine articles. These were not easy words. For someone like me, I saw this as a chance to raise my grade without taking a test. These words were not easy to find so it meant I did a lot of reading. I don't remember exactly how she factored in the extra points but I ended up with 110 extra points at the end of the semester. I was very pleased to get an "A" too.

I went through most of my college years at the University of Texas at Arlington; however, it took me a period of 16 years to finally get my degree. Along the way, I took many of my basic courses at the Tarrant County Junior College South Campus. I do not remember the names of my English instructors there but they were some of the best I ever had. My American Literature instructor gave us lots of reading assignments; mostly short stories. That was okay with me since I loved short stories. With her guidance, we saw the writers and the characters in these stories much more clearly and with new understanding.

Then the next semester, my World Literature instructor informed the class on the first night that we would mostly study the works of William Shakespeare and she hoped no one had a problem with that. I had read Shakespeare from time to time but always thought of it more as a chore than enjoyment. By the time the semester ended, all of us who had stuck it out had a newfound love of Shakespeare. I remember on one occasion when the instructor told us that because of a school event, we would not have class one evening. Everyone groused about it so much that we took a vote and decided to meet anyway.

Looking back, I did have many excellent teachers along the way who helped me become a "wordsmith." Now this is my opportunity to thank each and every one, and honor their efforts through my choice of words