一月二十一日的聚會裡，同學們拼命把頭髮搔短了，想要記得一兩個好老師，「這個說那個抗戰不努力、那個說這個剿匪不用心」，好像沒什麼共識。不過
Yvette想幫陳毓芳老師說句話。
大四那一年，系上來了兩位不食人間煙火的美女教我們英文作文。公費生那一組的超級美女是王言梅老師，（「喂！Yvette,我們的記憶力哪有那麼壞？！」）自費生那一組是陳毓芳老師。(我們當然記得她!)對於基礎不好、三年來亂參加社團、耽誤學業、超級打混的Yvette來說，陳老師既自由又嚴謹的訓練是最好的教學。（這種過程，Sidney, Ernest, Daisy, Carol, Joyce, Anita, Margaret, Victor, Sophia. Fanny......和Agnes妳們原本底子就穩的同學是不會懂的！）
我們從題目開始練習起。那時候Yvette自作聰明想寫 “Pollution,” 以為很好發揮，卻是惡夢的開始！（到現在看到這個字還是不斷的列出supporting details！） 我們先畫mind chart, 用free association連結所有可能資料，然後過濾不要的、無法發展出敘述的細節，接著，打outline, 寫thesis statements, topic narrowed down, main idea #1, main idea #2, main idea#3, conclusion, transitional statements！一次一個練習：課堂討論、課堂交換批改peer editing, 帶回家revise…聽起來是很八股的訓練，可是就像我每次都用羅素的 “What I Have Lived For” 當例子一樣，將我的手指頭做了最好的利用。往後寫作，特別是寫說明文時，長度可以做最好的掌控。我記得大四的七舍日子裡，我都會呆呆拿著臉盆洗衣服，腦子不曾閒著，都是打叉不用的supporting details。
毓芳老師習慣打兩個分數，一個是content/structure, 一個是diction/grammar/documentation. (我到現在也都還這麼打分數！) 當時的Yvette很自作多情的想：老師一定是怕傷害我們這些鄉下來的大朋友，多給一點甜頭嚐嚐。我好像右邊的分數都比較高，可是我的diction 和 grammar 最弱！（也許我記錯了！）
因為毓芳老師的優雅，讓我們變得很多事！她下課憑欄遠眺的時候，我們覺得她的眼神有一股淡淡的憂愁。有一天，她挽著她的中型提包（是LV包嗎？好像哦！那時候當然不知道什麼叫LV包啦!）騎著小摩托車回員林，我們就偷偷去跟蹤…（跟丟了！）
那段跟蹤老師的日子，真的好美哦！
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附: 羅素的經典短文
What I Have Lived For
from:
The Prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) won the Nobel prize for literature for his History of Western Philosophy and was the co-author of Principia Mathematica.
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