The look on my student's face this morning would bring tears to the eyes of a granite monument, but I can't help it: I don't carry spare pencils. In fact I rarely even use pencils. I'm a pen person, but my student is not.
She asked for a spare pencil to use on the midterm exam. "I've got a spare pen," I told her, but she prefers pencils. She asked a few classmates for a spare pencil--no luck. She finally accepted my extra pen, but she looked as if she wanted to stab out her own eyeballs with it rather than write.
I can't say I understand this pencil fetish but I do sympathize. In a pinch I'll write with whatever comes to hand but given a choice I prefer my pens fat, blue, and smooth. A pen that feels uncomfortable in my hand or that doesn't glide across the page gets tossed in the drawer until I'm desperate. I always tell students they can write their exams with anything as long as I can read it, but I really don't expect a student to prick her finger and write in blood, even if I don't have a pencil she can borrow.
Do comfortable tools make ideas flow more smoothly? A pen that drags and skips might interrupt the stream of thought, but strong ideas can force their way even through defective or uncomfortable equipment. Or so I hope, for my student's sake.
Pens leak, pencils break,
ink blots and splatters;
take the test, do your best:
only ideas matter.
Now that's simply dreadful. Surely you can do better! Submit a poem in any form in the comments--in ink, in pencil, in your own blood if that's all you've got!
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