No Regrets: Why I Won’t Say Don’t

As an English teacher, I come across many a student in the process of finding themselves a writer. Faced with a difficult choice, they come to me for advice on pursuing an English degree, or more specifically a creative writing degree. Should I do it? How do I do it? I do have an obligation to provide this student with a realistic view of what such a career choice entails: that you have a lot of intense reading and scholarship ahead of you, that you’ll probably have to teach whether you want to or not, that the field is enormously competitive, and even if you do make it to the top of the tower, you’ll never be even modestly wealthy. That’s only fair. Some would say if I were truly doing them a favor, I would say Don’t do it! There’s no future for us! Pursue Law! Pursue Business! Get a job in an office and move up the chain! The Humanities are a death sentence! But I won’t. I tell them what I did and what I’ve done. I tell them I’m happy and I’m not sorry. I tell them that if writing is what they need to do, then they should do what it takes to become a writer. And to tell no one I have put them on the path.

UVA dorms

 

Madison post Act 10

Judging from the endless doom-and-gloom posts about academia in the humanities from friends and colleagues on FB and so forth, this is extraordinarily irresponsible of me. But I resent these posts, because they assume that my current impoverishment is somehow my own doing – that it’s my fault that I have little money and job security because I chose a stupid career path. The attitude is that pursuing a humanities degree is hardly different from giving in to a drug addiction. Like we could have been something if we weren’t always looking to get our knowledge-fix. Like writing a poem is as big a waste of time as snorting an eightball of coke is a waste of money. I hate this attitude and I hate these posts. You’re upset that you are poor and jobless, I understand. But that is NOT the fault of your pursuit of humanistic knowledge. Your being a writer is not the problem.

UVA Charlottesville

I too feel very discouraged. It seems that when it comes to public education, the state of Wisconsin has taken a turn that I’m fearful represents the direction in which the entire nation will go. I remember that when Act 10 was passed, I cried and cried into my husband’s shirt, feeling like my entire life had been abig mistake and now my future was destroyed. The job market sucked already…colleges were responding to loss of public funds by adjunctifying and focusing on a business-like cash-grabbing philosophy instead of academic excellence and serving the students. Today, my favorite governor is working to ruin the UW-system and getting rave reviews about it from regents. First, the budget cuts.Now the plan is to dismantle tenure. Professors would still have something that would be called “tenure,” but the entire meaning of the word will be changed to something along the lines of “pretty much the opposite of tenure.” No highly desirable candidate will come near the place. But the administration doesn’t care about that at all. All they want to hire are adjuncts, so that’s what they’ll do. Students won’t really know they are being screwed over either – not until they graduate and try to get a high-paying job or get into grad school, and by then the banks will have them in chains.

 

Ignatius in NO

Faulkner's door in NO

This agenda serves somebody who’s got a lot of pull right now, and whosoever it may be, they are not just endangering my income, they are crushing my dream. I never fantasized about having nice cars or big weddings or a monstrous house. I fantasized about characters and new words to use. I could have been a lawyer, but I couldn’t quit reading Stephen King and Maya Angelou and Flannery O’Connor and Mark Twain. I could work for a corporation in their marketing department, but I’d just end up with cancer from the guilt. The only thing that got me through as a child living with pain was writing and reading. The only thing I ever wanted to play, furthermore, was teacher. That’s right. I realize now that the reason I hated school as a kid was that I wanted to create my own classroom – one that differed from my experience in all the right ways. The fact is, I NEED to write. I didn’t choose to be a writer any more than I chose to have brown eyes. It’s who I am. And teaching makes me happy, even when it’s really hard. Even failing at it is fulfilling. So I am doing it, damn it, for as long as I am allowed.

Miami U in Oxford

Peter Orner's class

I will continue, furthermore, to put worthy students on the path. Because you know who I hate? Former drug addicts in recovery who tell us, Don’t do it! Not even once! How easy for you to say. You got to enjoy it before things got out of hand. You know damn well it was a good time – at least in the beginning – and who are you to deny us that same fun? And just because you developed a crippling habit, doesn’t mean everyone who tries it once will do the same. Let us make our own mistakes, will you? We might just have a blast and walk away unscathed. We’ll have a blast either way and you know it.

 

AWP Atlanta

cream city table

I tell my students to be the writers they are, because where the path will take them is a wondrous place. Because I chose to pursue creative writing, I have not only made great friends, I’ve made friends who are talented minds capable of creating exquisite art with words. For conferences, I’ve traveled to New Orleans, Denver, New York, San Antonio, Charlottesville – cities to which I may never have gone. I wrote a novel to its end. I won $1000 for a story that was fun to write. I read my poems and stories to rooms full of people. I’ve seen it in print and on the internet. I’ve been a part of a community of people like me who were more interested in raising the human condition than in buying things. I was in charge of two magazines that went to print and were sold for money and looked pretty darn good.  I’ve read so many beautiful, amazing, inspiring poems and stories and scholarship.

Oody, Suzanne, Joe

UWM crew at Art Bar

I don’t think about money so much because my mind has been infused with more interesting things, like how trauma and storytelling and history are interwoven (thanks Tim Melley), how dirt and desire and the grotesque figure into fiction (thanks Patsy Yaeger), how poetry and art work with each other (thanks Brenda Cárdenas), how to tell a story about a woman’s anger (thanks Gwynne Kennedy), what troublemakers looked like in the 19^th century (thanks Kristie Hamilton), and how to teach a class on horror (thanks Leilani Nishime, my first-year English instructor, a grad). Furthermore, I’ve gotten the chance to sit in a room and talk to a group of people every week about true crime in history and about the literature of madwomen. Now, I’m going to get the chance to learn with some Honors students about digital creative writing. I refuse to see these as wastes of time. I judge that they are the best uses of free time that a human can spend. I don’t know how to put a price on these lessons because they are priceless.

 

G group, without whom there would be no novel

Me, Suzanne, Jen

To tell a student not to pursue that same doomed dream is to deny them years of incredible experiences. It is to deny them the opportunity to crack open the world and understand it on a new and magical level. To penetrate the obscure, the mysterious. To be engrossed by what it never even occurs to other people to notice. By making this choice, they are entering an enchanted world. Wherever the path leads, it takes you up someplace high, where you can see forever. And when you reach the bleak desert where the path peters out, you’ll know what I know. That it’s better to watch your dream disappear than to never have dreamt at all.

Writers Retreat at the Clancy's on Lake Buelah