Unbalanced

I don’t know why it is, but I get my best ideas for blog posts when I’m emailing someone. Maybe by email I mean free writing. And maybe by best I mean only. Oh, well. It’s all about me anyway, now isn’t it?

Something is always awry in my checkbook, which is no doubt why it’s my checkbook and not our checkbook. Like last month the bank said I had about $900 more than my checkbook said I did. Ten days later the bank balance was $1100 to the good. At the beginning of this month I had $800 more in the bank than in the checkbook.

If you think I spend that money, you probably knew me well but maybe not so well lately. For some time now I’ve just ignored the money if I’m in the black, because terrible, awful things can happen if you spend it and then find out you don’t really have it. I’ve never done anything like that, but I think I read about it on the Internet.

I’ve also read that some people balance their checkbooks to the penny every single month.

Of course, that could be one of those, what do you call them, urban myths. Or just a downright lie to make some people feel badly about themselves. Not me. I’m not the kind of person who would believe that. That would be like trying to sell a hide-a-bed on Craig’s List and having a person email you from Arizona offering way more money than you ask for the couch, then sending a cashier’s check accidentally made out for $2500 and telling you to cash it immediately and send—never mind. That would never happen.

So, I never spend that ghost money.  I’ve heard some people’s bank accounts get all messed up because they forget to write down how much they spent. They might be talking to the cashier about the cool nail polish she’s wearing and about how she got it online and you have to polish the nails then put a magnet really close to the nail and it makes this ripple effect. In other words, not paying attention. So, you know. I just don’t want to be one of them.

There I am online, and I see I have all my transactions recorded. So just for fun, I add up my outstanding transactions and subtract that amount from the amount the bank said I should have. Then I subtract something from something else, I don’t know what, and I came up with the same amount as my outstanding checks.

Two numbers, and they’re the same!  I thought I had balanced my checkbook!  It was as if I’d just seen Big Foot! I mean, I’d heard about it, but I’d never really seen it.

Of course, you can probably tell from my description of how I arrived at that conclusion that there is no way in Texas that I had done that. However, lest you pity me for my deficiency, let me just point out that there are advantages to being a financial moron.

• If you’re married, you never get stuck paying the monthly bills.
• People don’t ask you to help with their checkbooks.
• Nobody expects you to calculate a tip.
• You develop a close relationship with your company’s salary and benefits person due to their having to explain your pay stub to you every much.
• Best of all, you never get depressed over spending too much money, because you don’t know how much you ought to have anyway.

Well, this month the difference between what the bank says and what my checkbook says is less than $300. Still to the good, though. That’s what counts, right? And if anybody asks me if I have a nest egg for retirement, I can say yes, I do, and if they ask me do I have a good interest rate, I can say yes, I do. A flexible rate.

End the befuddlement

Things apparently taken for granted in the world befuddle me. Granted, I am easily befuddled, but that’s just one more reason things shouldn’t be so out of whack. So as not to confuse me. It’s very important that I not be confused, and if you don’t believe me, just ask around.

And don’t think I don’t know that this post will get me in hot water. I do, and I guess I’ve reached a point at which you can just boil my butt plumb off. I’d rather be butt-less than brainless. Not that anybody out there is brainless. I’m just saying. Better no butt than no brains. I’m sure that’s written down somewhere besides here. Probably.

So here’s the first thing.

• Why do so many people hate Planned Parenthood? Is this organization hurting anybody? Does it bother people that through Planned Parenthood men, women, and teens who might otherwise be unable to afford contraception, HIV protection, or sex education can access it? Does anybody really think that because PP exists people are going to run around having sex with random people?

 What kind of nonsense is that? I’ll tell you what kind. The kind that believes Planned Parenthood exists mostly to provide abortion services (which, by the way, aren’t illegal, and, further, a very, very small percentage of clients are there for abortions.) And it’s the same kind of nonsense that insists kids won’t have sex if somebody doesn’t tell them it exists. Please, people. Ever heard of hormones?

Sex is going to happen, whether we talk about it or not. Wouldn’t it be nice if kids didn’t venture into the world without either knowledge or protection?

Which brings me to the next point on my befuddlement chart.

• Who would start a rumor that Planned Parenthood is the place the Anti-Christ goes for vacation? Okay, that’s not exactly what was said. What was said was nobody needs the information and services Planned Parenthood provides. You know who says that? I’ll tell you who.

Parents of girls who find themselves pregnant at 15, completely clueless as to a) exactly how sex led to this quagmire and b) how they might have prevented it; parents of sons who will spend the next 18 years trying to either a) keep up child support payments or b) be a father–and here’s a surprise–parents of kids who seek abortions because no one has offered them an alternative.

You probably would like me to stop now, but I can’t. Stopping in the middle of saying things I haven’t said since I was shown the door in a couple of churches is kind of like covering your mouth with duct tape when you are nauseated (and yes, that usage is just fine, thank you very much. Look it up). All that sick is still in there, and if that duct tape ever gives—well, you get the picture.

• What is so wrong with contraception? If a person doesn’t want to do it, he or she doesn’t have to. If a parent hopes to keep a teenager from using it by telling them not to have sex in the first place, good luck. And don’t think for a minute it can never happen to kids raised in a religious tradition. Teen pregnancy isn’t just for heathens.

And it would behoove us all to remember that we are not the only people on the planet, and that we are not the only people who want the best for our children.

Now. I’ve got this one last thing. Not the least, mind you. But I know you’re probably relieved to know it’s the last.

• Why do men get to decide what women can and cannot do with their bodies? Where is it written that my body is subject to legislation, to jurisprudence, or maybe just a whole lot of juris and very little prudence.I’m referring to the Supreme Court, which, in case you don’t know your supreme courts, is largely made up of men, one of whom said that the government has “a legitimate interest” in abortion because it wants to stop women from making unwise decisions.

Can the man not hear himself?  The very fact that he said it proves that he, for one, cannot prevent anyone from making “unwise decisions.”

Why do we not just quit making stuff up and and arguing about what’s made up and what’s not? And–now, here’s an idea–why don’t we concentrate on doing what too many of us aren’t doing? Like taking care of the children who are already here? Maybe keep them from dying at the hands of their parents? Provide them with a quality education? Healthcare? Is anybody against any of this? I didn’t think so.

So–I will if you will.

Get a clue

Sometimes I despair. I’m beginning to think that if we worked as hard to make money as we do to stay ignorant we’d be rich indeed.

Do people really not know racism is a bad thing? Seriously? Maybe it’s just that they know the definition of racism. Here it is, courtesy of the American Heritage Dictionary, 5^th edition (yes, I do have it, and yes, it does weigh about sixty pounds, but how skinny did you think ten thousand new words would be?):

1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character and ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

Seems simple enough to me. No big words. No highfalutin’ concepts. Don’t need a calculator or a map or a translator. So if it’s that simple, and we can see that being a racist is detrimental to our world, why don’t we just freaking stop it? Why do we insist on teaching our children that racism is Biblical, factual, and insurmountable?

You know why? Because every day we hear people like Rush Limbaugh say, “We need segregated buses. This is Obama’s America.”  We read about emails sent by people like Carol Carter, State Committeewoman for Hillsborough County, FL:  “I’m confused. How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, DC in one day in sub zero temps when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?”

And of course you can’t go wrong talking about racism if you quote good old Newtie, who would have us know that Barack Obama is a “food stamp president,” and that African-Americans should be looking for jobs, not food stamps.  Not only that, but he can’t understand why anyone should be offended by such statements. He is, after all, only addressing a painful subject that others won’t.

If all those people, those educated, in the public eye, people, think that kind of talk is okay, why should we? You know why? BECAUSE WE AREN’T STUPID, THAT’S WHY!

Everybody has a choice

Such moronic statements are the pathetic attempt of a little people to seem like bigger, more important people. From people like that, our children learn to make hurtful, absurd comments. Consider these:

“My parents said I could date anybody I wanted except Blacks and Jews.” (Said aloud. ALOUD. In a classroom).

“How can I be a racist? My best friend in high school was African-American. I even stayed at his house overnight.”

That’s not the most ridiculous thing students have ever said, bless their hearts, but  it’s the one that might make a teacher want to kick that student’s butt up between her shoulder blades so she’d have to take off her stylish beret before she could—well, you know. And not that it happened to me. I’m just saying.

I am so tired of the idea that African-Americans are without intelligence, work ethic, or morals. Or that “white” is the default, and anyone who hopes to succeed has to conform to the white ideal.

That’s all ignorant, racist stupidity.

I know these things to be true:

• Race has no basis in biology. It is a societal construct—that means we built it, brick by brick, and it can be torn down the same way
• Race is absolutely political; whatever group is dominant will always make the rules

• There is no divine or cosmic hierarchy of color with white at the top

If this is news to you, you might want to study up. I wasn’t born knowing them. I read a book. Or 10. Or 100. I can look at objective fact rather than being swayed by whatever anecdotal evidence the world might offer.

Oh, yeah. I know one more thing: racism is a choice.

 

 

Go ahead. Rate your professor. See if she cares.

Ratemyprofessor.com is to teachers what truth is to politicians—unwanted, unneeded, and, ultimately unnerving. I mean, seriously. Who wants to do a job where every day the people who don’t like the way you do it can—well, as a friend says, put it on your permanent record! You know the permanent record, right? It must be out there in the ether, because most of us who were threatened with it have never seen it. Wherever it is, it’s covered up in every wrong thing you’ve ever done,  like your D in sixth grade math, or a neighbor’s memory of you at 9 years old, standing on the viaduct near your house screaming all the curse words you know and being taken “down to the station” to await your mother. Not that those things ever happened to me. I’m just saying. That’s the kind of stuff that could be there. Politicians, on the other hand, have the means to create spin, so their foibles somehow turn into attributes. Unless they have sex with interns. Then, not so much.

However, in cyberspace, teachers have a permanent record, or at least teachers in higher education do. It’s called rateyourprofessor.com. Students are anonymous, professors are not. You are identified by your real name as well as where and what you teach. There’s a place for professor rebuttals, but what student is going to believe anything there? It was posted by the enemy. Well, this enemy will never, ever go there again. I did, once. And here’s what I saw:

• A chili pepper. I can’t even speculate on what that has to do with teaching.
• “Mrs. Johnson is obsessed with John Stewart, but not in a good way.” How can there be a bad way? It’s John Stewart!
• “Mrs. Johnson is openly unmedicated.” And I thought that was the default. Besides which, it’s a dirty lie.
• “Mrs. Jnsos grade incostantently and goves D for know reaction at all. DONOT tak herclass.” Enough said.
• “She is prejudice against junior college student,” one wrote.  Am not. I was one.
• “Mrs. Johnson is an atheist. She thinks Eric Clapton is God.” Have you heard him play? And how am I an atheist if I believe he exists?
• “Mrs. Johnson is a liberal but she doesn’t try to shove it down your throat.” Finally. Something positive. You take what you can get.
• “All you ever do in this class is read and write.” Duh.

I am not making this up. I couldn’t make it up. It’s too sad. What’s even sadder is that this is often the basis upon which students choose a teacher. They view it as a gift from God, handed down from the mount. Or from Eric Clapton, handed down from the stage. Whatever your persuasion.

The saddest thing of all is that anybody can put anything at all on that Web site, and you can’t stop them. If you don’t want to be held up to the world as a really lousy teacher and human being, you’d better give everybody an A and forget about actually teaching them anything.  Shoot. Just hand out the grades at the beginning, and you won’t have to contend with the following:

What if I could go to ratemystudents.com and write random comments about them?

• In a paper (about abortion and after I specifically said, “Do not write about abortion or gun control), a student wrote,   “A person is a feces, too.”
• A student’s explanation on why a C was unfair: I worked really, really hard on that paper. I spent two hours on it.
• A student received a B on the one essay (out of four) she turned in to me. She missed twelve out of fifteen classes and then registered a complaint when she failed the class.
• In a literary analysis on the treatment of women in the early 20^th century: “In the olden days, women were placed on a pedal stool.”
• After he plagiarized his entire first paper, a definition essay, from the Internet ( a bad paper with ten-year-old sources formatted according to APA guidelines), he said the plagiarism shouldn’t be held against him because it wasn’t discovered until he had submitted his second essay. Guess what word he was defining? PSYCHOPATH!
• He couldn’t do his homework because he had to take his girlfriend to the fair.

I could go on and on, but now I’m depressed again. Shouldn’t be, because the majority of my students are hardworking, dependable, and focused.

For the others—I’m thinking about something along the lines of ratemystudent.com. It would save their future employers a lot of time and effort.

Home Work

So here I sit, in front of the computer. I’m teaching only online, and I did the happy dance for two weeks in anticipation. I thought it would be the best idea I’ve ever had. It’s not. You know why it’s not? No, no. Don’t guess! I’m going to tell you why.

First of all, I never get dressed. TBL leaves for work and I’m in sweats, because I usually sleep in them in the winter. He comes home. I’m in sweats. Different ones, maybe. Sweats and UGGS. Sometimes I’ll change it up and wear a nightgown. And UGGS. And a sweat shirt over the nightgown. I know, right? Sometimes I go to Quik Trip wearing the same thing I slept in. Well, not the nightgown. But the sweats, for sure.

Second, I’m pretty sure my body is expanding to fit the sweats. Stuff isn’t where it used to be, and if it is, there’s more of it. That’s kind of unsettling.

Second, did you know Jon Stewart comes on like, four times a day? He does. It’s the same episode for a 24 hour period. That’s not the bad part. The bad part is I watch them. All of them. All four. Plus the one I DVR’ed, which is the same as the others.

Third, I have to talk to people. On the phone. Who knew so many people called during the day? And you can’t even tell they’re telemarketers because they have actual phone numbers, not necessarily 800 numbers.  Is that even legal? And they call my cell phone.  My carrier is a call dropping fool, yet I have perfect reception when telemarketers call.

Fourth, TBL talks to me. Every morning. In the morning! Who talks in the morning?  Does he think I really need to be told what Rick Santorum said about Mitt Romney? If one of them was Mother Theresa and the other was Eric Clapton, I wouldn’t vote for either of them. Oh. Well, Eric. That’s just crazy talk. Of course I’d vote for him. But I do not need to be spoken to before 10 a.m.  I am trying to watch Jon Stewart. But I guess that kind of rules out talking for the whole day, doesn’t it?

Fifth and finally, my house is full of cats. I know. You’d think I would have noticed there are five of them, but when I was going to the office every day, I saw one or two at a time. Usually the one that likes to pee on my stuff and the on that stands on me in the middle of the night. Now that I’m home all day, they crouch at my office door, daring me to come out. I’m not crazy. I have a porta-potty and satellite radio. Why should I come out?

I guess I could whine all day, but it’s not all bad. I don’t have to decide what shoes to wear every day. If I must leave my office, like when Jon Stewart is on, I get exercise playing dodge the cat. Sweats don’t have to be ironed. I found out there’s no mail fairy. (Did you know an actual person is behind this mail-delivery thing? And she doesn’t look happy about it either). I now know who stops at the corner and throws his trash from Sonic on my lawn.

And Jon Stewart. Every day. All day. Now that I think about it, that’s worth staying home for.

Serendipity

The thing about serendipity is that you have to pay attention. You also have to accept the idea that discoveries by chance can produce positive changes that thirty years of psychotherapy couldn’t. Not that I’ve had thirty years of therapy. Or know anyone who has. Or have experienced positive changes. Not this week, anyway. The next best thing to actually changing (because change is scary) is thinking about changing (not so scary).

I’ve spent a lot of my life oblivious (mostly when I’m driving, according to some people who just criticize, criticize, criticize), or paying attention to the wrong things. However, reality has intruded often enough that I’ve noticed how much time I’ve spent dithering.  I may not be moving, but my mind is flinging itself around like a bird trying to get out of the garden center at Home Depot. That bird is not going anywhere but by accident, which is exactly how it got there. I said all that to say that without direction I’m pretty useless. Lessons I learn usually have to be come serendipitously.

A couple of days ago I went to—not Sunday School. Little kids do that. I went to a class before church. On Sunday.  With adults.  I have to make a decision every Sunday to get dressed, get in the car and go. Because I have things to do. I’m a very busy person. But I went, and although it was interesting and thought provoking, as always, I’m usually so busy worrying about what I need to get done that I can’t remember what we talked about, even though I was definitely there. Sometimes, though, I get a takeaway, something I apparently needed to hear, or it wouldn’t have stuck. This time, that takeaway was the benefits of taking a few minutes out of the day to be still, to meditate, if that’s the way you want to put it.

I’ve blown that advice off about 37 million times, even when I was paying somebody for to give it to me. This time, something I’d done the day before reinforced the need to slow down—be still, yeah, but also to take note of the people around me.

Saturday I went to my uncle’s funeral. He was 89, married 64 years to my mother’s oldest sister. It was a good funeral, as funerals go. We laughed as much as we cried. There was no last minute plea (threat) for all us heathens (non-fundamentalists) to rush to the altar lest we be carried off to Hell.

Mostly, it was about Uncle Joe, about what a character he was. I’ve known him all my life, but that was just one of the many things I didn’t know about him.

I didn’t know he had an Indian motorcycle when in his teens. I didn’t know he wrote poetry. I didn’t know how he doted on my aunt. I didn’t know about his love of really, really strong coffee, his woodworking skill, his unending hospitality, the way he took his time in everything he did—in short, I didn’t know squat about my Uncle Joe.

I wasn’t close to him as a child, but that ship sailed a really long time ago. I left home at 15, pulled my head out in my thirties, and learned how to move on soon after. I’ve had plenty of time to get to know him, but I didn’t. I didn’t because I’m always running off to do something. I fritter away time because I won’t make lists and I won’t make lists because I lose them and I lose them because I’m always running off to do something.

You know, blithering your way through life takes a lot of time. And we only have so much of that—it’s not a renewable resource. If you’re not making connections with other people, especially people important to you, your time is wasted.

So, I’m not saying I’m changing. But I’m thinking about it.

At least we have Jon Stewart

Unlike many other countries, the United States has no oversight when it comes to the media. Supposedly, that’s because oversight would infringe on the journalist’s role as fulfillment center of “the people’s right to know.” Prior restraint, Qualitative Inquiry calls it. Well, all right then. We wouldn’t want to get in the way of the truth, now would we?

Please. If you stumble across the “truth” anywhere but on The Daily Show, will you let me know?  And seriously, why is a “fake journalist,” as Stewart has called himself over and over, the only trustworthy source of information out there? Yes, he ridicules the media and politicians, but only because they’re ridiculous. And he ridicules them with an even hand—Republicans and Democrats, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox “News.” Maybe fake journalists are the best kind.

The match between media and politics is a match made in hell, at least for us. The two do have a lot in common, though. They lie. Members of both institutions have taken the “service” out of “public service.” Their egos are so big they should have their own seat on the plane. They lie.  They’re hypocrites. They want the glory without the guts. And did I mention that they lie?

So we have no control over either the media or politicians. It occurs to me that maybe they don’t tell the truth because they don’t know the truth. It’s all a blind climb to the top of the heap, spinning BS into readers and votes. The so-called “real” journalists do little more than sit and spin. That includes those on MSNBC, CNN, and dear God, Fox News (and you do know that FN provides two hours a day of what they label as news, and 22 hours a day of “infotainment”). And yes, I did hear it on The Daily Show.  Didn’t I just say that’s where you go to get the truth?

 

KISS, KISS

I’m in Oklahoma City for the spring residency requirement in my MFA program. My head is so full I wouldn’t be surprised if it exploded, which is why I haven’t posted anything lately. This afternoon I was in a travel writing class with James Bernard Frost—if you get a chance to read something by him, try A Very Minor Prophet, due out April 1—and I figured out I kind of suck at it.

But while I was in that class, someone talked about the disparity between the venue and the band at a recent Flaming Lips concert. Sorry I can’t tell you what that’s about, except that the event took place at the Coca Cola Center here in OKC. Apparently it’s the last place one would look for any lips, let alone Flaming Lips.

Her comment reminded me of some concerts I attended a few years ago. One of my dearest friends, knowing I’d never seen my musical hero, Eric Clapton, in concert, took me to Columbus, Ohio, to see him. Oh. My. God. It was awesome. Becky also got tickets for a KISS concert, which we attended the next night. The crowd was nothing like I expected. Oh, there were the usual people dressed as the KISS band members, and a few who apparently thought they were at The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Seriously.

The attendees ranged from toddlers to grandparents and included dozens of guys and a few girls from Rickenbacker Air Force Base. All kinds of people. Anyone could have wandered into the tent situated in the middle of a large grassy area and not felt the least out of place.

So a couple of months later we went to see KISS again. This is not an obsession, because I reserve that kind of intensity for Jon Stewart and Eric Clapton. This is just a hobby, and if you’ve ever seen KISS in concert, you’ll understand. This time in Little Rock. I expected to see much the same kind of people I had seen in Columbus. Boy, was I surprised—and not merely because the opening act was a band called Saliva.

First, there weren’t many grandparents and no toddlers at all. A few people were dressed like band members, but what I most noticed were the tattoos, the mullets, and the bare skin that really, really needed to be covered. I’m not saying people like this are only in Arkansas. We have a good many in Oklahoma, and I’ll bet they’re common in every state in the union, including Ohio.

This is just an observation, one of those things that makes you go, “Do what?”

I’m not dissing Arkansas. I love the place, and I lived in Fayetteville off and on when I was a child. I’m just saying. Or rather, wondering. Why such a disparity in the two crowds? Same band. Same summer. Same night of the week.

Like I said, this is just an observation. You might have some thoughts on it, and I’d like to hear them as long as they don’t have anything to do with hillbillies or the lack of civilized society in Arkansas. Seriously. Don’t go there.

Irresolution

Time for those wicked resolutions again. The media is full of them. Friends reference them. Even the spam in my inbox offers to help me make and keep them—for a price.

Inasmuch as I have no resolve on hand—I have to buy it at Walmart, and I am not going in there—I’m not going to make any resolutions that I don’t think will be keep-able. And here they are:

• I will not watch a single reality show (but I will not miss any true crime programs—completely different concepts, believe me).
• I will love my granddaughters with abandon.
• I will let my cats bully me three days a week (down from 7).
• I will read fifty books.
• I will clean my office at least once. (Up from, um, never)?
• I will exercise twice a week (down from five, in case you thought me heroic).
• I will leave the salt off my margaritas. Might substitute Mrs. Dash.
• I will write in my journal once a week (up from when I find where I left it and write in it before I lose it again).
• I will curse only when provoked (down from whenever I damn well want to).
• I will buy ten pairs of shoes (down from thirty).
• I will continue to ignore traditional country music.
• I will continue to get all my news from the Daily Show.
• I will not “Tweet.” Or “Twitter.” Or “shoot” anyone an email.
• I will make it my job to watch Donald Trump’s hair to see if anything moves.
• I will watch Sarah Palin’s mouth to see if anything intelligent comes from it.
• I will continue to lobby for Eric Clapton’s elevation to rock ‘n roll Sainthood.
• I will remember the oppressed and those who keep them that way.

And that’s about all I can stand to think about today.

Don’t give them what they want . . .

Teaching creative writing is usually a joy, but not always. The difficulty arises when I try to articulate the reality of writing versus the myths of writing.

That struggle can be encapsulated in one Continuing Education class I taught several years ago. It was called “So You Want to Be a Writer?” It wasn’t a creative writing class, per se, but the students who enrolled in it were either already producing creative work or hoped to do so.

The course was a little lecture and a great deal of Q and A. Participants wanted to know how long it would take them to see publication, how big an advance they could expect on a first book, how much money had I made writing, why must they revise, why worry about an audience, how would they find an agent, what if I send my book out and two publishers want it, and many others.

In every case I disappointed them.

• I don’t know when you’ll be published.
• Advance? What advance?
• My last royalty check on my first book was two years ago, and it was for $2.31; if my second book had stayed in print four or five years longer, I might have made back the money I spent on promotion.
• The only good writing is re-writing—there are no “good” first drafts, just drafts with potential.
• An audience is a necessary part of your creative writing experience. That’s who would give you the money if there was any money to be had.
• Finding an agent is about as hard as finding a publisher.
• That will happen at roughly the same time as the phrase “honest politician” ceases to be an oxymoron—in other words, don’t hold your breath.

You probably won’t be surprised to know that by the sixth week I had four students remaining of the original 15. And that class never “made” again, at least not with me as the instructor.

Teaching a creative writing class often entails answering those same questions, sometimes explicitly, sometimes obliquely, over the span of 16 weeks. It’s harder, much harder, to break their little hearts because I become closer to them over that period of time. And frankly, some of them don’t see any reason to write without the possibility of seeing their work in print.

You can imagine my relief at learning that my job as a creative writing instructor doesn’t necessarily include answering many of those questions.

As part of my MFA program, I will take several classes in pedagogy. In preparation for that, I’m reading one of the assigned texts, Teaching Creative Writing to Undergraduates, by Stephanie Vanderslice and Kelly Ritter. In the first few pages, the authors state the following:

[When teaching creative writing], you don’t have to be a gatekeeper. All you have to be is a teacher, a guide, the first . . . in a long line of guides, showing your students the way. You are not here to supervise a career or to create the next Pulitzer Prize winner. You are also not here, in the parlance of television culture, to vote any of your students off the writing island. You are here to do a defined job—introduce the craft and criticism of writing poetry and fiction—and demonstrate how this is done in a college course. That’s all. (8)

Oh! What beautiful words those are!

I have always felt inadequate in the “gatekeeping” role, but because that’s what students seemed to want—the nuts and bolts of publication—that’s what I gave them. As much as I loathe Dr. Phil (don’t look at me like that—if he knew me he wouldn’t like me either), I feel compelled to say, “What was I thinking?”

As I reflect on it now, I realize that if I gave the majority of my students what they “want,” my composition classes would write no papers but spend class time playing “Angry Birds” on their ITouches or posting their status (boorrred) on Facebook (or worse, posting messages to me WHILE THEY’RE IN CLASS); nevertheless, I would issue A’s to all and sundry. My literature students would never have to read, or at least they would never have to read anything outside of the Twilight series or the Bible. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) These students, too, would receive A’s.

But I don’t have to give them what they want. I just have to give them what they need to become competent writers in a world where we often have to do what we don’t want to do, and we don’t even get A’s for it.