Students

To the university to empty my box stuffed mostly with junk mail, to get an updated sticker for my I.D., to take care of some housekeeping matters. Found student evaluations in my box. Always informative. I generally do quite well on these. Now and again somebody hates my teaching style but more often students respond positively. The comments that fascinate me are ones like this:

I've taken screenwriting at two other institutions and learned more in one week than I learned in those classes combined.

Makes me wonder what in hell those teachers were doing! I am aware that some screenwriting teachers have precious little real world experience. Having this is my strength, not only experience as a working screenwriting but, from the teaching standpoint, especially having been a reader for a production company and, more recently, a judge in screenwriting competitions. I've rejected scripts on page one in special circumstances (I usually give even the worst script a five-page benefit of the doubt) and tell my students why.

Beginners write "spec scripts," not shooting scripts, and there's a great difference between the forms, a difference inexperienced teachers apparently are not aware of. Screenwriting is the only form of writing about which you can say, Don't let your writing get in the way of your story. When I judge a contest, a shocking 2/3 of the writers don't heed this -- they shoot themselves in the foot, and their writing errors get them rejected before their story is able to hook me. They may have the best story on the planet but they don't know the "rules" of spec script writing and so don't communicate it in the special reading environment of the contest (or prodco submission).

It's a competitive, tough, cruel world out there, with few benefits of the doubt or second chances. My primary goal as a screenwriting teacher is to make sure my students don't shoot themselves in the foot. It doesn't matter how good a film storyteller you are if you get rejected before the story kicks in.

I'm doing another major rewrite of my syllabus for fall but won't worry about it until after Labor Day. For all the kind words from students, I am forever tweaking the course, trying to make it better. One day before I retire, I hope to do it "right" ha ha.

A few students think I may be there:

Overall the best class I have ever taken in my 5 years of college!

Prof. Deemer has been, literally, the best professor I have had at PSU.

I try to remember these when I find another student calling me a fat, arrogant, worthless sonofabitch ha ha. Life in a zero-sum universe!