English 99: Literacy Among the Ruins

Gannon was offered a job at a small college where he thought he would be teaching a non-fiction creative writing class. Instead, he ended up teaching an English 99 class, which was basically the lower division class for kids who weren't ready for English 101. This class didn't even count as credit towards a degree for a student. I think that Gannon may have felt like he had been underestimated by the college. He mentions that he knows they had him teach English 99 because it was a profitable course, but even so if I were him I would feel a bit dishonored. Gannon obviously doesn't feel underestimated because he talks in a positive way about the course. He displays his humerous attitude towards teaching the course by saying, "Of course, I was an imposter. But so was the class I taught. I was posing as a professor and English 99 was posing as a college course." Gannon goes on to talk about how there were three categories in the class. There were the bored looking girls, the jocks, and the Bosnian refugees. He said that the girls talked about how life is hard, how they can't do anything, and about how tired they are. The jocks talked about how they have fun, they need freedom, and their talents. Then he said that the refugees talked only about life and the war they had experienced. If I were Gannon, I would be so rediculously bored with the concepts that the kids were writing about. He said that he started to dread the days he had to teach English 99. I think that I would definitely feel the same way if I were to be teaching English 99.