Hello one and all!
While it's been a hot minute since I've written a post, much to my dismay, it's because for the first time in my life I've actually been working really hard in school.
I've always done well in school, but never because I did more than the bare minimum. It's amazing that it took me most of my adolescent life to realize I was a genuinely smart person. I started learning how to read at age three, and a lot of that was self-taught (with the help of a dear friend--thanks, Reader Rabbit). I was reading at a high school grade level years before I ever started high school. And most books aren't written at such a high grade level, so for any of you teachers that think it's a good idea to have your ninth graders read a book that is their exact reading level for their book project, think again--books aren't typically written for college level readers, whatever that even actually means.
Anyway, I got my first B in second grade. That was pretty earth-shattering because I was proud of my straight As, but after a few years of being on the A/B honor roll, I realized the straight A train had long passed, and that I would never be there again. It was disappointing, until I realized I didn't care. I didn't study for math tests. I wrote one draft of an essay and called it a day. I got good grades on all of those things.
Despite all of that, I only realized that I was smart when I was fifteen. I was in a chemistry class, with a teacher that was disliked by all the students and parents alike (she was a mad intelligent woman, but that very thing can sometimes get in the way of someone being a good teacher), and most people that I knew always said that chemistry was difficult anyway. Let it be known that I did terrible, at least by my standards, in my biology class the year before. (I got a C. When I had a grade check for choir late in the year, she wrote "could do better" in the notes section, and I saw that and knew it was true, but science in general and biology in particular is so boring to me that I didn't care to pay attention enough to try harder. It's like my brain was physically incapable of focusing on any of it.) That science is the absolute worse subject to study in my humble opinion. That everyone said they understood physics better, which I was looking forward to since it was the science of color guard. (LET IT BE KNOWN--PHYSICS WAS FAR WORSE THAN CHEMISTRY. I DON'T CARE WHAT THE HATERS SAY.) But chemistry was rather understandable to me. One fateful day in that class, we were working on a group assignment that was pretty difficult. All of us were struggling to understand the topic and find answers to the questions before us. As we worked it out together, it all of a sudden made perfect sense in my mind.
I started writing as quickly as I could on the paper. I told my group I would explain in a bit, but I needed to write in silence for a moment so that I could get it all down on the paper, because I knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't have it anymore.
Once I had written everything down, once I could see it in front of my face and thus had no chance at forgetting it, I started explaining it to the other students in my group. I completely understood it, and after a while, the rest of them did too, or at least they understood a little bit.
That was the first time that I realized that I am naturally, genuinely, really, really smart.
Which of course explains how I have never had to put much effort into school, ever. I was usually 25 out of a 500-something students in my class. The people above me, many of them very good friends of mine, cared a ton about their grades. But I certainly didn't. If I could graduate, as far as I was concerned, I was good.
My first year of university was pretty easy as well. I did a special program called Jumpstart that was nothing like normal college, which I only learned after returning from my missionary service. Then college got hard. But even then, I didn't start putting in real effort until last semester, 2021.
The classes I took were creative writing in the genres, intro to literary studies, theatrical design, methods of teaching English, and intro to critical theory. The majority of these classes meant a great deal to me.
The literature class definitely wasn't for me. I mostly took care of other responsibilities in that class, although I did read a lot of good stuff in that class. However, I learned that there is more of a difference between analysis and interpretation than I realized. I'm really good at analysis. I still don't know what interpretation means. Even if I say "this thing in the text means this in real life," that's not enough? Everything in literature means something, but apparently people that study literature instead of writing want things to mean even more.
The design class taught me that I am definitely not good at design. I'm definitely a director, because I know what feeling I want to be portrayed, and I have general ideas (like "blue is an important color in this scene"), but that's about it. I feel like my design concepts were a lot weaker than a lot of other people in the class, but that's nothing I didn't expect. I was surrounded by a lot of talented people, and it was great to learn from them! I did learn, though, that of all the design elements, I kind of have a knack for lighting design. I surprised myself during an online class discussion by writing very passionately and with great insight about lighting. So if I have a talent or future in design, it's there! Which is good, because my current job involves lighting design from time to time, even if it intimidates me a little bit. Maybe I should try it more often!
My theory class was a really big deal for me because it's what helped me realize that studying English was for me. There were many years of my life where I didn't want to go to college, and I didn't make the decision to do until my mid-teen years. It was around sixteen years of age that I made the decision to attend university, knew that I had to study creative writing because it's been the only thing I've cared about my whole life, but didn't want to at all. In my junior year English class, we did a unit on critical theory. I was not looking forward to it; it sounded like the worst thing in the world. What really worried me about it, though, was that my teacher said that critical theory is a large amount of what you study if you major in English in college. I knew that I would major in English, so this sounded like a nightmare.
But once I got an actual taste of it, I absolutely adored it.
My group studied and presented to the class about archetypal theory. (Which is a theory I absolutely adore, and I'm studying it a little more this semester--but I'll get to that later.) A short version of archetypal theory is that characters in a story fall into a certain role (hero, shadow, mentor, etc.) and follow the general same story arc (the Hero's Journey). This is based on the idea of the collective unconscious, that there are some things that humans just know because that's the way it's always been.
I loved it, like I said, so that was a relief. But the purely magical part was when the time came to present. As we were explaining the collective unconscious to the class, they kept asking questions because they didn't really understand it. Other members of my group would make poor attempts to explain it, to no avail. Since this is the basic foundation of archetypal theory, that was an issue. Finally I spoke up. (Most of you know by now that I am a pretty quiet person, and I was especially in high school.) I said, "You know how there are people that are afraid of spiders, and they're like, 'I can't explain it; I've just always been afraid of spiders. They've just always freaked me out'? That's what we're talking about. There are some things humans have just known from the beginning of time, like, some spiders are extremely dangerous, so humans have feared them from the beginning of time, and they still do whether they understand it or not. That's the idea of this theory."
The looks of understanding on their faces was priceless. Thanks to what I, the most quiet person in the class, had said, people understood this theory. I think that was the first moment I realized I really would be good at studying English. As I look back on it, because I certainly didn't know it then, that was my first successful moment with teaching too.
So while it's standard, I of course was overjoyed to have the opportunity to take an intro to critical theory class. It's what really got me into the idea of studying English, after all. I'm so glad I got to learn about theory on a deeper level and all the different ways it influences the way we read and the way we live. I also had the best professor ever. Dr. Dib is a SoCal fashion queen who brought snacks for us during exams, used Alan Menken songs as examples of post-colonial theory, is an absolute meme lord, recommended great books for us to read, brought us snacks during exams, and taught me the Arabic word for "welcome back from your shower." (I can't remember what it is, but it's my favorite word in the history of ever. I need to email her about that eventually.)
I took creative writing in the genres last semester, my first creative writing class of my college career. (Many thanks to my high school for offering me my first imaginative writing class at seventeen, which was such a joy for me.) I remember sitting in class on the first day before the lesson had started. I looked around at the other students, realizing they would all read and critique my writing. I work hard to make myself unashamed of that, which is really difficult for most people, but this was a scary feeling. Complete strangers would have to read my work and talk about it right in front of me. I thought to myself, I am in a very vulnerable situation.
But then I thought about that same thing again: I work hard to make myself vulnerable with my writing. I know that no matter how a writing career goes, it doesn't happen without absolute vulnerability. If you don't feel powerless, terrified, and weak at some point in your writing career, there's no way you're doing it correctly. But since I know that's true, I go out of my way to put myself in uncomfortable writing situations, just so I can make the best of them. Because I know that's how this goes. I thought about how I have made myself kind of used to the feeling, and I looked at the other students and knew that more than likely, most of them had not put themself through the necessary turmoil to get to the point of acceptance that I was at. And we were all going to do it. We were all in an incredibly vulnerable situation. And I knew that knowledge made me the strongest person in the room. As I continued through the class and saw how scared so many of my writing classmates were, despite their obvious talent, the truth of that knowledge was confirmed.
I met amazing writers, got to read incredible examples of work, and I felt myself become a better writer. I read differently now, and I've gotten new ideas for stories and writing techniques that have really helped me grow. I am overjoyed with how my first writing class went.
All of those classes were hard work. But the one that really got me was methods of teaching English. It's a 4000 level class, and I am more or less three years away from graduating. That should have been the first indicator that I was in way over my head. It's typically the last class that English educators take before they start block and student teaching. I am nowhere near that part of my education. It's a small and intimate class, which was really fun, but I definitely felt like the odd one out most of the time since everyone else was so far along in their education.
This class required a lot of lesson planning and other activities to help us become teachers. We filled out mock applications of what we would have to do to get our teaching license. We planned a six-week unit full of lessons based on texts of similar themes. It was hard work. It took everything in me.
But I had never wanted to try for my education this hard in my entire life. As I thought about why that was, I realized it was because in this class it was the most obvious that my education wasn't my own. With everything I did, I thought of my future students, and I just wanted to make everything as amazing as I possibly could for my kids. The stress of lesson planning kept me up at night. I talked to my friends and my dad all the time about how I just wanted to help my kids, how I didn't know anything, how I wanted to make sure I planned the standards right so they were understandable for my students.
I'm grateful I took this class way earlier than I was supposed to, at the end of the day. For one, I now understand lesson planning and other essential parts of teaching in a way that I didn't before, so now I have years to think about it and practice it before I go out and do the real thing. That makes it a lot less intimidating to me. The second reason is because it taught me how to be a good student.
For better or for worse (usually for worse, but it has its good moments too), for a good portion of my life I have struggled to care about pretty much anything. There's a lot of factors that play into that, but it definitely explains why my interests are so few. I don't have the energy to care about anything else. But while I cared about my education before, I now care about doing well in it, and about working hard in it. And let me tell you, last semester I learned that caring about things isn't fun. The anxiety I got from worrying about my grades was a new kind of pain to me, and I don't know how so many of you have been doing it for all this time. It's not pleasant in any capacity. But I know it's worth it. And last semester was a rough go. Sometime next month I'm gonna have an appointment with my academic advisor and see how many of those classes I have to retake in the fall. (I think I passed them all, but honestly, it was such a rough run that I can't be quite sure about all of them.) But while that was true, it taught me the lessons of what to keep doing and what to fix. I know how to succeed for the rest of my college career now.
This semester I'm taking mythology (that's where the archetypal theory comes back into play), beginning French II (DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TAKE A YEAR OFF OF STUDYING YOUR LANGUAGE is all I'm going to say), American literature II (I'm drowning in reading, but at least Mark Twain really is as good as everyone said), screen aesthetics (essentially watching a lot of movies and pausing them every two seconds), and foundations in education (I failed this class last year, but now I have a professor that actually makes sense, as well as control over my depression). I'm also taking Jesus Christ and the everlasting gospel at the religious institute. It's awesome. I'm working hard the first week in, and good things are happening for me. I'm staying ahead.
Let us always remember that some things are hard, but that's what makes them priceless. I barley got out of last year alive, but now that I have, I have lessons that I'd never take back.
Thanks and much love!
