I Serve No Master; I Am Chaos

I Serve No Master; I Am Chaos

Works Cited Missing

Let's be blunt; you, Professor, want to know who is the person writing my papers. To be more clear, you want to know what is the difference between Bill, the person who writes the papers for your class, and the other Bill, who is a son, friend, brother, cohort in crime, and what other title is given to me. It is you who wants to know the voice behind this black ink and white paper, or the electrons if you read this off a computer screen.

You have suggested that I, as well as the rest of the class, begin with our first paper. I would rather start with the second paper. Do you remember my second paper? It's the one about writing beyond the theme. Oh, wait, -- roughly twenty other students wrote similar papers. I'll be more specific; I wrote a narrative story about a Dungeons and Dragons game. In it, I wrote about a third person incident in which the protagonist is slowly replaced by a fictional character he plays in a role-playing game. I was trying to show how it was impossible to escape what professors want out of student papers. The game master, Chris, was my metaphor for the professor. As the G.M., he expects that I, as a player, suppress anything else going on in my life and do what is required of me as a game player. In a similar sense, that is exactly what teachers want in one of my paper; to write exactly what is required of me in order to match their expectations. This was the original point to my paper.

However, I became a victim to what I was attempting to overcome. I turned in my paper and the teacher (that means you, Mike) didn't like it. I had to re-write it in a week's time or I would not receive credit for the assignment. With the gun loaded and pointed to my head, I re-wrote the paper. I edited my original point out of the paper, changed the format, and added a new point about bending the rules of writing. I received a B+. Even in the attempt to escape normal expectations, I failed.

So who's voice was writing that paper? It was mine first time around, but it was not mine second time. The first paper was me. It was based on a true event.