Back in the U.S.A.

I was reminded (sometimes painfully) this summer of what it was like to be a student in a challenging class, and I found myself desperately wanting to please my professor. I sent her a barrage of e-mails as I worked on my papers, hoping to win her approval, until she gently reminded me that I was writing the paper for me, not for her. Aside from being a nice way of telling me to leave her alone,--she was a very busy woman--it also gave me a constructivist-teacher-epiphany (let's call it a CTE). To throw themselves into their work with curiosity and ambition, students need to be reminded repeatedly that they are doing their work for themselves, not for us. I wouldn't have spent hours, days, weeks in the Bodleian Library if my focus had been determined for me instead of by me. Well, I probably would have because I'm too much of a perfectionist, but I know that my final product would have been far weaker.

I think too often that the discourse I use to teach writing revolves around me. I say things like, "I don't want you to use boring verbs," or "I don't want to find any apostrophe errors," or whatever. I have never once told my students that they were writing their essays for themselves, not for me. Writing an essay to ingratiate yourself to your teacher and writing an essay to satisfy yourself are two wholly different tasks, and the latter is clearly the one we're striving for here. That goal has always been lying quietly underneath the writing lessons, but it's been drowned out by the much louder, egotistical-teacher-voice. I like that quiet voice. While I'm sad that I've largely ignored it so far, I'm eager to refocus.

In her comments on my final essay, my professor described my writing as displaying a "linguistic felicity." This seemed like a strange pairing of words at the time, but I truly was happy--in a tortured kind of way--as I wrote and researched, and it apparently showed. I'd like for my students to know how this feels.