Back in high school did you ever work really hard on a homework assignment and then received a much lower grade than what you thought you deserved? Don’t you wish you could now go to that teacher that wronged you with such a low grade and tell that teacher what you thought. Then the teacher would change your grade. Well that’s not going to happen! to you anyway. But it did happen to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. When Brian was in high school his music teacher gave his class an assignment to write a song. Brian wrote a song he entitled Surfin The teacher gave him a F for the song he wrote. The rest is what they said is history. The song Brain Wilson received a F for writing in music class became the Beach Boys first big hit!
Last week after 58 years the high school officially changed Brain’s F to an A. I didn’t know they could do that. Now that I think about I should have one of my grades should be changed. Back when I was in high school in my World History class we were assigned to write a term paper. As I recall the paper had to relate to World War 2. I decided to write my term paper on Nazi Propaganda how brilliant is that! Just the title should had been an A. This was back in 1979 and back then we were not allowed to use the internet! I had to go the library and once there I went to these large cabinets with hundreds of small drawers filled with small index cards. Somehow looking through millions of these little cards I was supposed to find the book I was searching for. After I found the right card then I would have to find the book in the library All by myself! Kids of today have it so easy, all they have to do is type a few words and there’s everything they need. After my big trip to the library, I then proceeded to write what might become the finest high school term ever written. Bill& Ted would later say dude that was the most excellent world history term paper in the history of term papers. I could sell my paper to the movies and make millions. After I turned my brilliant term paper I was prepared to get an A+ and a comment from the teacher saying “that was the best term paper I’ve ever seen”. But to my dismay, when I received my term paper instead of an A+ there was a C-. Instead of comments of praise my teacher wrote all kinds of comments on what I did wrong. How could this be I guess my teacher couldn’t see greatness when he saw it. When I become the worlds best selling author, I want this grade changed to an A+ that I deserved!
I’ve been thinking maybe just maybe I didn’t deserve an A+ on my high school term paper. One reason that I have a blog is to become a better writer through practice. Today I look back on my blog posts although they are not from very long ago I still can see how I could have used a different phase or term. I could had done a better job of telling my stories. Hopefully I well get better in the future. I’m sure when I will read this post sometime in the future I will think that I could had written more clearly and somewhat different than what I wrote. I believed I learned more from my C- than I ever could had I received an A+. My world history teacher would tell me that I needed more of an explanation on that last statement. Thomas Edison once said “I’ve not failed I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. I think that I deserved an A+ because now I’m looking at it as a 55 year old man not as a teenager in high school. Maybe Brian Wilson did deserve a F for his song Surfin think about this when Brian Wilson was in high school there wasn’t music called beach music because Brian was the person who invented it. Instead of ending Brian’s musical dreams it maybe just made him mad enough to make his dreams come true. And besides, a number 1 record is revenge enough for that music teacher. What do you suppose the future students of that thought when the teacher said “I expect a lot of you students, remember I once gave Brian Wilson a F.