The Russian class

I started teaching in 1997 at Syracuse University. For the last twenty years, I【小题1】 (teach) a class on the nineteenth-century Russian short story in translation. My students are some of the best young writers in America. (We pick six new students a year from 【小题2】 applicant pool of between six and seven hundred. ) They arrive already wonderful. What I try to do over the next three years is help them achieve their “iconic space” —the place 【小题3】 they will write the stories only they could write, using what makes them uniquely themselves-their strengths, weaknesses, obsessions, peculiarities, the whole deal. The goal is 【小题4】 (help) them acquire the technical means to become joyfully themselves.

In the Russian class, 【小题5】 (hope) to understand the physics of the form (“How does this thing work, anyway?”), we turn to a handful of great Russian writers to see how they did it. I sometimes joke that we’re reading to see what we【小题6】 “steal”.

A few years back, after class, I had the realization that some of the best moments of my life, the moments during which I’ve really felt myself【小题7】 (offer) something of value to the world, have been spent teaching that class. The stories I teach in the【小题8】 (class) are constantly with me as I work, the high bar against which I measure my own. I want my stories【小题9】 (move) and change someone as much as these Russian stories have moved and changed me. So I decided to write this book, to put some of what my students and I have discovered together over the years down on paper, offering a modest version of that class to you. It is written【小题10】 anyone who is interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these hard times.

''You're too small, Ginny, and you'll never make an Olympic team,'' claimed my first-ever rowing coach in the late winter of 1978. I had just taken 【小题1】 extremely large risk being here, as I stood in the basement of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium. I had confessed my dream, 【小题2】 was admittedly outsize at that point. The easy road did not lie ahead for me.

【小题3】(defeat) not just by his choice of words, but by his certainty, I left the gym in a panic, rushing out into the cold winter weather to find comfort in the loneliness of my off-campus apartment.

As I walked, I began to reassess my future,【小题4】 (make) room for my coach's opinion. But just because my own coach didn't have faith in me, or just because I'd heard a forceful ''no''【小题5】even a useless yes, it didn't mean I had to give up so quickly.【小题6】I arrived at my apartment, my dream was back on the center stage.

【小题7】(achieve) my goal, I struggled hard every day. Eventually, I made that 1980 team, despite our not beginning to compete at the Olympics. All the effort was worth the wait. And the lesson- not to give up too soon and not to allow someone else's opinion to destroy my desire 【小题8】(stand) me in good stead since those years.Everything I have today is a result of sticking to that dream, all those hours on the water ,in the weight room, and in the stadium - they got me here, where I know now that big aspirations need not just time to develop, but a firm belief in them. 【小题9】I am not my own champion for my dreams, no one else will. And I will not allow anyone else to decide for me【小题10】is possible.

A good teacher is many things to many people. In my own experience, the people I respect most are the teachers 【小题1】 demanded the most discipline from their students.

I miss one teacher in particular that I had in high school. I think she was a good teacher because she was a very strict person.I remember very 【小题2】 (clear) a sign over her classroom door. It was 【小题3】 simple sign that said, “Laboratory-in this room the first five letters of the word was emphasized, not the last seven.” In other words, I guess, labor 【小题4】 her was more important than oratory which means 【小题5】 (make) speeches.

She prepared her work very carefully and demanded us to do the same. We got lots of homework from her.【小题6】 she had broken her arm, and everybody in the class thought that maybe the homework 【小题7】 (reduce), but it continued just the same. She checked our work stamping her name at the bottom of the papers to show that she had read 【小题8】.

I think sometimes teachers who demand most are liked 【小题9】. But 【小题10】 time goes by this discipline really seems to benefit the students.