So Many Dishes

While the obvious answer to this prompt is to talk about my husband Ken, who certainly has had a significant positive impact on my life, I’m going to focus on the man who taught me to write.

I entered the graduate program in music history at Ohio State University pretty full of myself. My undergraduate degree had been with honors, I’d written and defended my honors thesis, and Ohio State had awarded me a University Fellowship, underwriting four years of grad school. I’d had two full years of music history coursework, when most undergrad music programs only included one. I thought I was well prepared.

Then I walked into my first graduate level class and met Dr. Alexander Main. His first statement was, “in my experience, most entering graduate students cannot write. You may learn something about the music of the classic period, but you will learn how to write properly.”

That was the hardest course of my life. Dr. Main was exacting and demanding. We each wrote a paper that we turned in at midterm, which Dr. Main graded and then returned so that we could rewrite them for the end of term. Out of a class of 30 people, there were no As and only one B- on the midterm papers. There were failing grades, unheard of in grad school. And I stared blankly at the C- on mine.

I put in many hours revising that paper. I knew that it would count for 50% of my grade. And since the other half of the grade the final exam, I spent countless hours in the library, listening to the recordings of music we would have to identify on the exam.

Somehow, I earned an A for the course, even though the grade on the revised paper was a C+. But I realized that my writing had improved, even though it could still be better.

Many of the other students in that course swore that they would never take another class with Dr. Main, but, as a music history major, there was no way to avoid his classes. But, the second time, I knew what to expect. I still saw red ink on my papers, but less and less. Finally, on the last paper I wrote for him, he returned it with the notation, “apart from the lack of a proper introduction, there is much here that I admire.” Almost 50 years have passed, and I can still see that note, written in pencil on the top of the first page, with no other marks anywhere!

I also had the chance to see other sides of Dr. Main, as one of his teaching assistants. He demanded as much from himself as he did from his students. But he could also be sympathetic, patient, and supportive. I signed up for a doctoral level seminar that he was giving on the relationship between music and literature in the romantic period. The only other student to register was a music education major with little background in music history, who definitely in over his head. Yet Dr. Main was extremely patient with him, clearly adjusting his expectations to meet the circumstance. We were to each choose a topic, research it, and report to each other on our findings and progress through the term. Dr. Main did likewise, presenting his research to us and treating us as colleagues. In addition to teaching me to write, he modeled how a teacher can have high expectations and still accommodate and encourage students who have difficulty meeting those standards.

I have thought of Dr. Main often over the years. Any time someone compliments my writing, I say a silent thanks to him.