In my last post, I mentioned some university jobs and their basic challenges to grad students. The job mentioned in this post is one job that posed challenges to me at one point in my MFA career:
Sometimes, the jobs can be nightmarish. During my undergraduate career, I have long dreamed about becoming a creative writing teacher. I was so passionate about this subject because discovering writing was like a religious conversion. Throughout high school, I never had confidence in my ability to write. It was in a freshman literature course that sparked my interest. I read C.S. Lewis novels on my own at the time, but writing about short stories, poems, and plays also sparked my interest. A few semesters later, I worked up the courage to take a creative writing course, and my life has never been the same since. Since I had help in becoming a writer, I wanted to help other young writers as well. When I had the opportunity to teach lower division creative writing, my dream came true, even if the pay was lousy. I was filled with hope and ambition with how I was going to teach the class. I was not going to be like my first creative writing teacher, that jerk who ripped student’s works to shreds, killing them as writers in the process. I envisioned myself as their bodhisattva. I would nurture them and lead them to enlightenment in writing fiction and creative writing. However, experience of teaching was not what I expected. I only connected with a handful of students. In their varying levels of talent, they brought their interest and their desire to learn. One student was a joy to have because of his intelligence. Another brought her talent and joy (despite her many absences). Another applied her Marine Corp discipline to the crafts of fiction and poetry and I gladly gave her my time outside of class to help her. A conscientious man was my ally because he was the only thirty-something student in the class. Most seemed indifferent. They seemed to elsewhere, in side conversations, not caring about the subject. Many never read the assigned works. I vaguely remember them, but the student who was downright hostile is definitely indelible.
I don’t remember when the hostility began or whose fault it was. She definitely made a bad impression with her early departures. She was smug, sure of herself, and definitely too smart for me. She was a college senior intellectually slumming it in a class for freshmen and sophomores. She was taking graduate course, one or two upper division courses, and my course. Sometimes she was above me and my topics; other times she looked at me with contempt. And for someone at her level, she had the worst classroom etiquette. She often talked while I was speaking or made noises while I wrote on the chalkboard, my back turned to the class. I often responded in kind – directly telling her to be quiet. This only made the situation worse. When I confronted her after class about a side conversation she had with a classmate and warned her about the consequences, she accused me of persecuting her. As I tried to hold my ground in the discussion, she became more belligerent. I told her we would have a discussion with the department head the next time it happened and she bellowed at me that she had a lot to tell her about my teaching ability. She then stormed out of the classroom.
I left the class shaking. By the time I walked to the library, I was in tears. I went to the English department and hoped to find the Chair in her office. She was away on a conference. I spent the next hour talking to the graduate advisor. She listened, gave me anecdotes of other graduate students who also had students treat them terribly, and humorously refer to my student as a “bastress.” I always chuckle when I think of that word. I went home and did not go to the literature seminar later that evening. One or two more absences occurred because I was extremely stressed out. I wrote reports to the Chair about the incident and stated I was going to fail her; my student also e-mailed complaints to her. The student sent me an extremely long e-mail about the issue, and, in the end, I declared an uneasy truce with her.
I nearly failed the graduate seminar because of my absences. I did not communicate with the professor at all until I was ready to return to class. I knew my grade and my seat in the program were in jeopardy, so I sent the professor a “mea culpa” e-mail apologizing for my absences and explaining my reasons for them. Because this professor had been a significant part of my undergraduate career, he expressed his disappointment and displeasure in his reply, but he was willing to meet me and discuss what could be done about me and my grade. He said that he had observed that I seemed distracted with teaching before the absences. My reading essays were not what they could be and I was not as present in the course. In the end, I was allowed to finish the course with a satisfactory grade, even if my paper had to be turned in late.
My thesis chair, who mentored my creative writing class, also observed that the experience was not good for me. I was working extremely hard teaching the class, much to my detriment as a writer. I found it difficult to focus on my own creative writing and he commented that the quality was declining. He also noticed the lack of reading. I evaded the topic of books, but it was something he was able to see in my language. I was shocked by his frankness, especially when he said the school was exploiting me. It made me angry because it brought me back to when I felt exploited as a writing tutor and as a professor’s assistant. I was only paid $343 a month that semester and it felt like I was doing $1292 worth. I was in the program to write fiction and I was hardly writing at all.
To be continued…
Tags: graduate school, If You Want To Go To Grad School, stressful moments, workplace issues
