My Students Were Breathtakingly Different—One Assignment Revealed the Truth

They were breathtakingly different, uproarious Riley and introverted Matthew. These students in my writing and editing course had been paired for my hardest assignment: to interview and write about each other.

But they were honors students, and despite Riley's boisterous joking and Matthew's withdrawn doodling, they wanted their A. That meant spending time together, getting to know each other, and then time alone writing.

What happened next has happened many times: two seemingly opposite college students, who don't know each other and never interact, make friends.

Riley and Matthew come from different backgrounds. Riley's parents are divorced, and Matthew's are going strong. Riley likes girls—Matthew is transitioning. But they discovered they had plenty to talk about, and later to write.

Matthew confessed his wariness towards beginning the project in his work: "My social anxiety, preparing me for fight or flight, already prickled in my chest—if Riley was nervous when he approached, I couldn't yet tell. He gave me an easy smile, and we headed down to the study room he reserved on the third floor."

What happened in that study room, Riley said later, "was almost like a therapy session." He'd divulged that he was "embarrassingly good at roller-skating," and that he used to care more about the joke he was telling than the person he was telling it on. He was working on that. Matthew appreciated his honesty.

"As we talked, we both opened up," Matthew wrote. "I felt like I was learning small, individual things about him, as well as glimpsing larger, ungraspable truths. I didn't get a real sense of Riley until we trapped ourselves in that study room, laughing, listening, and unpacking our lives."

Riley then confessed, "Matthew has a grasp on his identity, his journey is mostly external. There are so many things most people don't even think about, when we think about being a transgender person. Aside from the major things like taking testosterone and altering one's appearance, what do you tell the barber? We certainly don't think to teach little girls about clipper lengths for different men's haircuts. What do you tell the car insurance company when they raise your rates because statistically, men get in more car accidents? How many times do you have to tell your professors and pizza delivery guy to use your real, freaking name?"

Having spent 40 years interviewing people, I know the surprising things you can learn when it's just the two of you, one with something to say and the other ready to listen. But I hadn't considered the lessons this assignment offers young people—that we're all human and we each have gifts and problems.

It's been profound to see how this assignment brings students together. An easygoing philosophy major, who sometimes painted his nails and wore an earring, became great friends with the reserved, impeccably dressed French major he'd interviewed. They'd sat across from each other all semester until the end, when, side by side, they chortled together about how hard it was to edit their own work.

One of my favorite odd couples was the confident, talkative senior, the president of her 300-some-member sorority, and the intensely homesick freshman who wrote poetry about her family. The senior, who had a job waiting for her after graduation, asked the freshman about her post-graduation plans.

"When she hesitates," the senior wrote, "I realize my blunder. I have entered my senior year and it seems I have forgotten that graduation is not encroaching upon everyone. She has plenty of time to discover her passion and career path. I quickly amend my question, asking, 'What would your dream job be?'"

Sensitivity to others might be this assignment's most abiding lesson. I was genuinely skittish about what would happen when an outspoken English major and a quiet science major were matched. At the beginning of the semester, when students introduced themselves, the science major said an interesting fact about her was that her boyfriend was from Europe. "That's not about you," the English student burst out. How would they get along, I wondered.

Very well, actually. One confided that her parents had been harmed in their childhoods, by family alcoholism and military PTSD. Those difficulties manifested themselves in her own childhood. The other student revealed her own problems. No doubt the English major was happily surprised to hear how the science major had confronted a fraternity boy for making fun of an overweight student in a bar. Back in class, I heard they were planning to go to a craft fair together.

That coming together produced something more important than beautiful essays and elegant poetry, though I got plenty of both. The semester I had Riley and Matthew, my husband and I invited the class over for supper. When Riley drove up, Matthew was in the front seat.

Aïda Rogers is a writer and editor in Columbia, SC. She teaches "Finding Your Voice: Writing and Editing for Life" in the South Carolina Honors College at the University of South Carolina. Her three-volume anthology series, State of the Heart: South Carolina Writers on the Places They Love, was published by the University of South Carolina Press.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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