Repsonse to: "The Dog Ate My Disk and Other Tales of Woe" (Carolyn Foster Segal), Prompt from: Patte | Teen Ink

Repsonse to: "The Dog Ate My Disk and Other Tales of Woe" (Carolyn Foster Segal), Prompt from: Patte

May 21, 2008
By Anonymous

Dear Professor Harris,

I love your class. You are an amazing educator. I have learned so much from you this year. For this reason, I more than respect you, I like venerate you. So, I totally respect all of the deadlines you put in place for assignments and such. Up to this point I have never submitted any tardy work to you. However, now I have a request to ask.
I’m not begging or anything like that or thinking that by giving you one of those lame “I’m coughing blood(Segal)” or “I moved this weekend and left my assignment at my old house” excuses that I’ll be exempt from the assignment. Even I am aware that you relize those illogical pleas don’t get the job done. Seriously, no one coughs blood unless they somehow contracted tuberculosis and so many people try that excuse, you’d think they were apart of the POE family or something (and I remember that we read The Raven that one time in class and you gave me an A on the paper that I turned in on time). So, no worries; I’m not even making an excuse; I’m simply asking, requesting, pleading, you know, for a favor (well not really even pleading, just asking really hard).
You see, something terribly exciting, yet terrible nonetheless, happened this Sunday. As you know I am majoring in film production and am enrolled in your class to fulfill my English requirement. I love your class very much. Anyways, this weekend I planned on walking over to the library in the old campus to print my paper, which I wrote and edited the week you assigned it so that I could maybe try to be a responsible person like you and have my work completed ahead of time. Well, I wanted to print it last minute so that there would be no way of losing it and so that the paper still felt nice and crisp when I placed in your hands on Monday. So, when I woke up on Sunday I grabbed my USB stick with my paper on it and headed toward the library, but when I got to the lobby of my tower there was a guard there who like yelled at me and insisted that I stay in my tower, so I asked him why and he said it was because Steven Spielberg was stationed outside in the quad with his film crew shooting the new action movie with Harrison Ford that apparently, no one knew about because Mr. Spielberg’s bodyguard wanted to cut back on paparazzi leaking information to the press. Then, basically out of nowhere my film professor, who was wearing like some sort of special pass that allowed him on the movie set, popped up behind the guard and escorted me out of my tower, and against my will, brought me onto the film set and up to this big crowd of other students in my production class observing the tracking cameras speed through the athletic track in the quad while following this awesome speeding sports car with Harrison Ford’s stunt double in it, who looked nothing like Harrison Ford, but I mean it worked for the shot because by the final edit of the film you wont be able to see inside the car anyway because of the positioning of the lights around the arch. Well, when they finished the shot, my film professor shoved me through the crowd and up to the director’s chair, against my will again, and introduced me to Steven Spielberg himself, while in my head I was thinking, I must leave this set at once and flee from the side of this first-class director in order to print my English paper which is much more important than being on a Steven Spielberg set, but my film professor insisted that I stay and kept telling Mr. Spielberg what a hard working student I was and how I always turned my projects in on time and other true facts like that, and then Mr. Spielberg asked me to stay and help around the set for the rest of the night, and I wanted to tell him no because I really needed to go and print my paper but he just looked so desperate and really needed my help, so I had to step up to the plate and stay because I mean you only live once and you should never pass up an opportunity to help someone in need. So naturally, I worked diligently on the set-- just like I did on my English paper-- helping the gaffers and best boys with difficult tasks around the set so that by the end of the night, Mr. Spielberg’s people were so impressed with my hard work that they offered me to accompany them to dinner at Wonder Wings and discuss a possible internship in the future, and I again wanted to inform them that I really needed to go to the library and print my paper, but then I remembered how my mother always told me it was rude to turn down a free dinner and how you professor always tell us to obey our mothers, and I didn’t want to let you down, so I went to dinner with Mr. Spielberg and the film crew, and by the time we were done eating it was really late and the library was already closed so by that point there was nothing I could do about printing my paper. This morning they all packed up and flew home though, so this terrible predicament should never unfold again. In reality, I wanted to print my paper much more than I wanted to hang out with Steven Spielberg because I respect you professor.
So, I was just wondering if you could please allow me to turn my paper in on Tuesday morning. I am very sorry about this whole thing.
Sincerely,
Student ID: A67OBF

Oh, and P.S. if you need to call Mr. Spielberg just email me and I’ll send you his number because I have his business card now being an intern of his and all. Sorry again for missing the deadline. Oh, btw, he’s going to send you tickets to the premier of the movie we were shooting, but please e-mail me first and I’ll talk to him for you, so there won’t be any confusion or anything. Thanks! ☺


Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 1 comment.


raerae said...
on Aug. 5 2008 at 6:08 pm
awesome!!!