Thoroughbred

On Tuesday, I led a workshop in Baltimore-- my first time leading an entire workshop on my own. It's for ex-offenders, and I guess the career center that sponsors it considers the workshopping at least vaguely therapeutic... but my professor introduced it to me a couple years ago when all my writing experience was shaped by college, and I've always thought of it as a class rather than an ex-offender-focused artsy version of AA.

So I prepped a lecture and a few writing exercises, and drove an hour or two to a mall (the career center is in it, who knows why?) in which EVERYONE stared at me and snickered and acted weird... I think because I was the only non-African American person there. Of course, that made me feel awful. Because as a teacher, I'd been standing out all freaking day, alone with the kids and wearing my "goody two shoes leader" mask for seven hours straight. So I got to the mall and got to put on the "dumbass white girl" mask for a while, and then shove on the "younger than you but more educated and don't worry, not threatening at all" one.

And it was great hearing and discussing the workshoppers' stories, written right there on the fly. It was awesome to talk to them about plotting and structure, and see how new and exciting some of them found it. It's wonderful knowing that my education can be infectious.

After all, I'm terrible at following rules. I never read directions, and find people who do endlessly exasperating. So it should be a relief to lead class all day in the high school, then drive over and lead a quasi-therapeutic workshop for an extra couple hours, right? It should be a relief to be in charge. But it was exhausting, and there was that tinge of resentment: why should I help you, when nobody is helping me?

It was so much fun being a student. My whole job was to figure things out, and tons of people had been hired and masses of equipment bought specifically to help me do it. But now my job is to make sure *other* people figure things out, and while it can be satisfying, it's nowhere near as exhilarating as focusing on the concepts themselves. I've got to do all my writing-related learning in private, on the day's fringes.

Guess I'm an "idea," not a "people," person. Guess I'm not very pragmatic. Guess I'm selfish at heart.

This post has no point, except to say: how come teaching means you can't push *yourself* in your craft? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it's so frustrating to help other people do beginner versions of what I yearn every second to do myself. It's so frustrating constantly dragging people along, trying to get them caught up. It makes me think: is there actually a point in getting good at this stuff? If, past a certain point, you're expected to shove your own learning aside and simply pass on what you can? I feel like a used up has-been, at 23.

So, yeah: I do the critiques, I answer the questions, I push myself to be as clear and concise and honest and thoughtful as possible, and yes, teaching IS difficult... but not in the way learning is. Teaching is one kind of exercise in the limits of communication, and learning another, and frankly, the learning kind is so so so so much more fun.

Guess the moral of the story is: work less, write more.