Victorian Graffiti

Sometimes writing is painful -- not because the subject matter is painful, but because the act of writing is also an act of fighting with one's self, trying to figure out what's good enough to keep, what needs to be scrapped. Academic writing can be disheartening (have I covered all my research bases? Have I made my background clear? Is the writing any good at all?), but poetry can be scrappingly awful to write. As a teenager and younger adult, I wrote compulsively, but most of it was bad -- a few lines here and there are all I've kept from those years, and about 6 good poems from 2003-2005. But at least all that writing went somewhere; even a few good lines are better than nothing at all.

When I get into it, I do enjoy writing of almost any kind. The dissertation is, after all, about one of my favourite fields -- Victorian lit -- and as more pages fill up in my black journal, I am relieved and comforted. The hardest part is learning what I'm writing as I'm writing, because at the outset, it's not often clear.

I used to try to write lyrics for songs, but I was never happy with the end product. I tried writing the music first (often just fiddling around on the piano and working by memory rather than writing actual notation); years ago everything I came up with sounded like old country, probably because that's what I grew up hearing, and I hated it. Today I would be relieved if I could come up with something rough, with enough pared-down notes to get the point across without seeming trite. I hit a stride a couple years ago with four academic papers I was very proud of -- not because they were the best, most polished pieces produced, but because the writing was fluid and simple, the kind of writing that gives just enough but doesn't give it all away. That iceberg writing that Hemingway was so good at. Writing that fights against excess.

The title is a quote from Clarence Darrow. I'll be honest: I found it by browsing through quotes about teaching and looked up Darrow afterwards. I was pleased to see that Darrow was an interesting guy -- he was the defence lawyer in the Scopes "Monkey Trial," an agnostic, and a member of the American Civil Liberties Union (while I'm not a much of a libertarian in the economic sense, I do feel most civil liberties should be protected -- choice and all that). Darrow was not a teacher, at least not in the traditional, occupational sense of the word, but his life's work was about asking why -- why things are supposed to be a certain way, why certain beliefs and ideas are set in stone, why we even need to defend our right to ask why.

Today I taught my last class of the semester. The semester was stressful. I tried to invigorate a class that's known largely for being dry and lifeless. Things went well -- better than I thought they had, but it took a session with my counselor to come to that realization. The end of a stressful time usually leaves me feeling relieved, giddy, weightless, and I felt a little of each last week, during the penultimate class. But today I felt a bit sad. I was not quite ready to let my students go.

All semester I worried that I wasn't giving them what they need from the class. Mike helped me realize that I AM giving them what they need, but that it doesn't happen all at once. Some of them may leave and never think about the class again; some may decide, in retrospect, that the class was worth it; some may even already feel fulfilled, even if it's not clear to me.

I hesitate to call them children, although I did call them my kids throughout the term. They are young, and their youthfulness is lovely, hilarious, irritating, callous, worth envying and worth being thankful for its fleetingness. I'm sure I taught them certain skills for university -- productive reading, research, library familiarity, essay prep -- but I hope I taught them to think and question and give a damn about what they read and write.

Doubt has strange connotations. Self-doubt can be crippling, but not if we think of it as questioning, as a process that can lead to something better. I've felt that when thinking about this past semester. I certainly feel like I will be a better teacher because of this course. And I certainly hope my students will be better people, better learners and writers and readers, and better doubters, questioning everything.