After class I’m wanting to learn more, about me and life and having a career. Told my students that everything they write should have some kind of instructional quality, that they should always be in a retrospective mode, in posture of re-writing. Class isn’t over. It followed me here to the conference room, thankfully. Everything has to be educating, a ladder for me to learn something about myself, about where I am and what I’m doing.
The current assignment, assigned well over a week ago and due tomorrow, is to show how Hughes and Plath are different, or the same, with a focus on mood and writing techniques. But even in that containment, in prompting the students and aiding them in constructing and crafting their compositions, I inventory something about me— a quaking compulsion to teach. But, I can’t get full-time, certainly not here at SRJC, and I can’t afford to go back and get a credential, teach high school. So I teach here. Or try. On the blog. And today, as I scribbled at the top of the page in Composition Book— “Re-Write.” I know you don’t have to hyphenate, but I choose to, to punctuate each province of the word. And the period, to further emphasize its imperative nature and impact on anything, be it writing or life, career or career-change.
I always want to be in student seat. Me, student forever. Hearing the “students” read their drafts, their thoughts and reactions to Plath and Hughes tells me I need to mimic them more. I need to be them more than me. Learn from moments. I said this morning that “You allow defeat, as a writer, or with anything.” Need to realize more what I said. There’s no reason for moods, there’s no warrant for grief, and certainly no gate for complaints. I can have everything. I WILL have everything…. If anything, they lectured me. They taught me this morning to be inspired, stay inspired, that we should always inspire each other. Well, they succeeded in motivating me, teaching, getting me to write as soon as I reached the conference room.
Where I am, what I’m doing… re-write. Not going to toss what I’ve composed, but re-shape, new tangibles and manipulatives, new directions and lesson plans— YES! Just as I wrote a lesson/lecture plan for class, I do for today.
-Write three pages
-Type poem written in class
-Make calls
-Send emails
-Various calls
-Time to Self
Also suggested to students, before getting into our Creative Writing interactions for the semester, that they should always have their perception in a mode of ‘fix it’. With writing, re-writing, studies, life, all. That what they have is enough to get them there— to a completed piece, to whatever school they want to transfer to, job, love, family. It’s improvement, yes, but as well “understanding your options” as I stated. Now, into MY day, into MY story, MY class…. Still wanting to learn more. Recording observations and feelings— Why be in this mode already? What do I mean, ‘already’? It’s never too early to entertain a re-write. Giving myself new assignments. One of them, new word in French every hour. Mine, this hour: “Les Rêves”. The dreams. How appropriate, oui? OUI!! Teach yourself, reader. Just as I do with my current current. In this tide and potential of knowledge. Staying contemplative, wondering how I got here, HERE, in this adjunct professor, or instructor, or teacher role. Well here I am. Teaching myself, and I think the students. Anything, always… Lecture me.
(3/28/17)