8/31/09
Dear Ms. Alter,
I am really looking forward to English this year. I have loved English ever since I was a little boy and being able to learn from you is just so exciting because I have only heard great things about you. I really enjoy reading the works of Hawthorne and Melville and I cannot wait to explore their novels with a resident expert like yourself.
I am very excited for this year,
John Althouse

5/14/10
Dear Ms. Alter,

How I have adored being in your class this year. It has been an honor and a privilege to have been your student. I really enjoyed everything from the extensive amount of homework that you assigned each night, to the tests that were on information we never covered. This class has taught me to adjust quickly and always expect the unexpected because you are so very unpredictable. I mean, each class is a whole new experience and I would not give it up for anything. I loved having pop quizzes on material we never talked about and the “opportunity” to finish a book in a week. Each class was so new and exciting it was hard to control myself at times. This class has been like nothing else I have ever taken because in every other class, I knew what to expect, but not here. That is what made this class special. I loved how every other morning I was able to walk into class at 7:30 to get a nice, “Good morning Mr. Althouse” before I sat down to see the pop quiz that was loosely based on the reading from the night before. And I loved it even more when I saw an AP prompt sitting on my desk begging for me to write about rhetorical strategies and parallelisms. It is by far the best class anyone could take in the morning, especially when you get so worked up about someone yawning. But the best is when you make absurd connections to sex, the human anatomy, and both male and female genetalia. I mean the connection between a penis and the maypole in “The May-Pole of Marymount,” or the connection between sneezing and masterbating in the “Paradise of Bachelors” were just things I would never be able to think of. But by far the most entertaining story you had us read was “Tartarus of Maid,” but mainly the first page. When you compared cloven walls to the devil, a Black Notch to a vagina, and a Blood River to a woman’s period. I mean that was golden.

But in all honesty, both you and this class ruined my life. Your class was the hardest English course I have ever taken. You gave us at least seventy-five pages to read in one night, but not just any seventy-five pages, seventy-five pages of Melville’s Short Novels. Melville speaks his own language that nobody can understand unless they read it ten times and have nothing else going on. But as students at a rigorous school, we do not have the time to read chapters multiple times; sometimes we hardly have the time to read it once. And do not even get me started on your quizzes. They are impossible. You asked questions that had to do with only one word that should have no meaning. You focused and quizzed us on the trivial instead of the big picture meaning of the text. One of your questions was “Ferreting.” Another was “Natural regality.” Those are not even questions. You just stated a word, what did you want us to do with that? We cannot read your mind. How were we supposed to know that ferreting, not the sport where two people put ferrets in their pants and see who can last the longest that you also showed us, described Claggart and how he snuck into positions that should not have been his. I mean come on. The only fun part of the class was when we got to do the Billy Budd trial because it allowed me to argue and I love arguing. But everything else in that class was horrible. Especially that you forced us to take the AP Language Exam. This was an honors class, not an AP class. And even though we did the prompts in-class, in an hour, we still have no idea how we did because you never returned anything. I had no idea if I was doing well or not. Even though you constantly gave us prompts from past AP tests, I was not prepared for the exam at all. It was awful. I would be happy if I got a two and surprised if I got a three. Because of you and your ridiculously high expectations of a bunch of juniors, my GPA dropped drastically and it is all your fault. And there was nothing I could do about it because you are insane. Finally, to be completely honest with you now that the class is over and I do not care anymore, I never finished reading a single book in your class. It was not because I had other homework or anything, I just didn’t want to. Sometimes I would read the notes of the book online but more often than not, I would not do anything for your class. There were some books for the class that I either did not own or never opened during the entire course of the year. Thanks for an unforgettable year.

Your number one admirer,
John

5/14/10
Dear John,
I would like to meet with you in the principal's office tomorrow.
Ms. Alter