I was looking through the magazine associated with my alma mater, GW. It came in a box sent by my generous mother. It was interesting to flip through it, though I had a slight panic attack. "All of these people are doing important things! What am I doing?"
Well, I have written some bestselling books (albeit for a regional market), and worked as a biotech editor for seven years for arguably the best company in the industry, have been married for nearly a decade, have three daughters, been all over the world. So, I guess I have been doing something. But I wish that I had figured out earlier on that, say, I wanted to write books. I knew that Hunter S. Thompson was my hero, but I didn't have the nerve to tell my old school J school professors that my hero was "Gonzo." I should have been braver, I should have stuck with my gut instead of trying to pretend to be something I wasn't. There were the resources at that school to support my creative ambitions, I just wasn't looking for them.
It's a hell of an overwhelming development to be sent away when you are 18 to a "good school" that is very expensive and told to figure it all out and succeed. It was only toward the end of that experience that I had that "fuck it, I'm doing it my way" impulse, which is the correct impulse, and my grades started to go up, or at least my relationships with teachers improved, I had some sense of what was going on, what I wanted to do, felt urgency in my life.
My goal with my own children now is to encourage them to be themselves, pursue their instincts, not lead them away from themselves or try to convince them to be people who they are not. That's the only real way forward. I learned the hard way. They shouldn't have to.
5 comments:
My goal with my own children now is to encourage them to be themselves, pursue their instincts, not lead them away from themselves or try to convince them to be people who they are not
Seriously?
You were born a great writer... you went to schools from age 5 that perpetuated your gift. Yiur elementary school made you keep a weekly Journal of stories from Kindergarten up and until 6th grade.
You were blessed with one of the best High Schools and yes GWU, a top University.
You were accepted into their Journalism program, and as I remember you were elated. The fact that you chose to do or not do what "you" now feel was your calling, is not anyones problem but yours. It, all of it was there for you.
Lets see how that "free to be you" thing works for you and your girls.
I can assure you that it has been my personal experience that children need a good educational foundation so that when they grow up, they are not simply eliminated from the schools, or the direction they may want to take their lives based on the early limited choices that were offered and made for them.
Oh, OMT (one more thing).
Didn't you think that you were going to be a musician /rock star in college.
I think in an academic environment, there is a tendency to keep one's head down and towards conformity. You are trained to carry out tasks, and indivuality/creativity are stifled in order to produce some sort of copy of what is considered "good."
So, in TV news class, you are encouraged to speak in the manner that Stephen Colbert so wonderfully mocks. You have to speak this way because that is how TV news reportes speak, even if you have always thought that TV news reporters sound pretty dumb. The power dynamics are such that you sublimate your own ideas to whatever it is your professor desires in order to get a "good grade," the most important thing, but in the process move farther away from your own talents which, ultimately, are the only things you can really rely on once you escape the fictional reality of academia into "the real world."
And I think a lot of the liberal arts education was mostly intended to keep certain professors occupied teaching intro courses, but I don't remember anything from most of those intro courses, where I spent many hours cramming my head full of information, only to repeat it in one sitting and then forget it. You could say that I became good at memorizing information and repeating it, and I guess that is a talent, though I am not sure if it was the intended outcome.
It's all about the math. You need good numbers to get into everything from a private quality pre school all the way to Med or Law school.
If you think you can change the world and how it, Accepts, Hires and Promotes it's citizens both young & old, then you will have succeeded in imposing your views on education on to the rest of the world.
I was very fortunate to have had teachers who were older and encouraged us to think critically. These were guys were all in their 50s, 60s at the time. They had experienced WWII as children, and so they had an altruistic approach to education. They were all headed to retirement when I had them, so we were among the last students to be forged by that way of thinking.
They were the best teachers I ever had, the "George Carlins" of education. They listened to you. "I'm so bored of listening to myself," one of my English teachers said. "I want to hear what you kids have to say."
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