Although a vague concept to some people, nuns as teachers is a distinct memory in my mind. Many nuns do exemplify all of the qualities you would expect to see in a religious being. Others, on the other hand, would fit more adequately as a lieutenant in the army.
In the past, I've had several nuns double as teachers, and each class they taught stands out as a peculiar learning experience. Terrified or not, I greatly benefitted from having a stone cold nun or two as teachers for several particular reasons.
I learned to memorize, especially under pressure. Two weeks into my first grade religion class, the nun who taught my class had me stand, face the window, and recite the Ten Commandments word for word. Unfortunately, I had yet to embed them in my brain. Even if I did know all of them, I was a nervous wreck, and could only manage to vaguely stutter out the first one. She repeated this tactic with me every class until I stopped shaking and, eventually, I managed to rattle off each one with ease.
Presently, if you were to ask me to state the Ten Commandments, I could still do it. In fact, I did this party trick last week for extra credit in a college classroom. Sister Mary Ann may have scarred me for life, but now I know how to memorize pretty much anything written down, as long as I am given a sufficient amount of time. I definitely do not retain all of the information, the Ten Commandments being on the short list of things I have yet to forget, and it certainly is time-consuming, but for specific tests and quizzes, Sister Mary Ann prepared me well. Plus, there will never be a scarier audience than a nun, so I'm rarely nervous when I have to do a presentation.
I am very particular about my grammar. The principal at my grade school, a nun of course, distributed monthly grammar tests. She created, allocated, collected, and graded these tests every month herself. Students who performed exceptionally on them had their tests displayed on the "Hall of Fame."
If a person did poorly on one, she would personally sit down to discuss the grade with him or her. Grammar rules such as "Who vs. Whom," "Few vs. Couple," "There vs. Their," suffixes and prefixes, and punctuation made up the majority of the tests. Miss a comma? That's a point. Put "stationary" instead of "stationery?" That's another. Now, as a sophomore in college, I reread my papers close to ten times before submitting them. No, I don't think my professors will mark me down an entire letter grade for missing a semicolon, but the fear that Sister Irene may pop out of nowhere and throw pieces of chalk at my head is enough to reinforce the editor in me.
I learned to stick up for myself. Some nuns that double as professors have a way of making a student feel insignificant when he or she performs below average on an exam or graded assignment. Several times I have been yelled at by a nun, or made to feel disappointed in work that I completed to the best of my abilities. Eventually, I found my voice and assured them that their yelling was unnecessary. Sticking up for yourself in front of a nun makes tackling an argument with anyone else a piece of cake.
I am very conscientious about my word choices and the number of "being verbs" I use. As a sophomore in high school, I had Sister Christie for both my American Literature and my Writing class. I had her twice a day, and she may or may not have hated me, but that's an entirely different article. She was a stickler for writing essays, and insisted on a very specific set of guidelines for completing them.
What are "being verbs"? Is, are, was, were, had, and has to name a few, but yes, the list includes many more. Refraining from using "being verbs" in a paper constitutes one of the hardest tasks I've ever had to achieve.
Clearly, this habit did not continue as Sister Christie would have liked, but I am always aware of how to rewrite sentences in such a way that eliminates as many "being verbs" as possible. She would also take off points if we repeated a word too many times. The only thing that kept me from failing her class was the thesaurus I kept in my locker, and the thought of being handed back a paper covered in red circles that pointed out every "being verb" I let slip through. I can crank out a paper on virtually any subject now, because I'm confident that my format and wording will give me a passing grade at the very least.
I learned to work things out on my own. Remember that principal who gave out crazed grammar tests? She was also my math teacher in eighth grade. She was so enthusiastic and passionate about math that I had no idea what she was attempting to teach the majority of the time. She would just loudly profess math rules and equations and expect the class to understand the concepts immediately. This was definitely not the case, so I mostly taught myself the gist of the material in order to pass the class. Although it would have been nice to have things clarified every once in awhile, sometimes putting in the extra work makes the outcome more satisfying.
As crazy as it seems, I am very thankful for the sisters who have taught me over the years. Valuable lessons, ones I would not have learned otherwise, now make up the foundation of my education and life. I want to express my complete gratitude for all of the principles they shared with me and the standards to which they held me. I don't think I want to experience, nor could I survive, their methods of teaching a second time around. That would just be nunsense.
