MY WRITING TEACHERS IN COLLEGE

I don't really know what brought it on, but last night, I thought about my teachers in college, specially those who kind of appreciated the way I write. On top of my list are Francisco Arcellana, Rene Villanueva and Jorshinelle Sonza.

The late Francisco Arcellana was an eminent writer and a professor emeritus. And he gave me a flat 1.0 (the highest) in his creative writing class. Until now, I honestly don't know what I did to deserve it but I so appreciate it since it was the only course to have given me such a grade in my five years in college!

Rene Villanueva is also a celebrated playwright and prolific writer. And I so appreciate him for boosting little me's budding interest in writing when he copied my brief descriptive write up/theme on a sheet of manila paper and posted it on the board for all the class to see, as an example of a witty and stylistic writing device. I wrote a paragraph, a description of a scene in about 5 sentences, with each sentence building up the description. I followed it with another paragraph, actually just a very brief sentence, that completely negated the immediaely preceding paragraph. Rene Villanueva thought it was so brilliant that my classmates (and other classes he handled that term) should take a look at it. It was not the originality of the device that he was quite proud of more than the fact that it was written by a very fledgling writer. I got 1.25 for the effort.

Jorshinelle Sonza was another teacher in creative writing, one of my earliest writing teachers. She was one of the first to really show appreciation when she said that I write very emotionally. She wrote her comment as a note to my brief write up on humankind's propensity to dichotomize between men and women when the more important issue is the humanity or lack of it, of people.

Certainly, I had other teachers who struck me as equally memorable and they include such luminaries as the late Concepcion Dadufalza (who kept a collection of clowns and who at one point in our class discussion said that despite my intransigence, she could admire my tenacity at holding on to my opinion) and Fr. Alfeo Nudas, S. J., who said I show "sparks of brilliance" although not quite that frequent and sparks that somehow never turned to conflagrations.

I don't think I was able to thank these teachers for their contributions to my writing experiences. After all, I appreciated their contributions in hindsight. Suffice it to say therefore that I remain grateful to them for being my inspiring mentors in college and now in life.