Alternate Drafts
I am the laziest ambitious person I know.
Sounds like an oxymoron, right? But I think it's true. To me, the moment that says it all was when I read that a college classmate of mine had received a Fulbright grant. She was a fellow journalism student; I graduated at the top of our journalism class; therefore, my first thought was "Why didn't I get a Fulbright?" Um ... maybe because I didn't apply? Or, you know, come up with a plan of study, or really learn a foreign language, or do anything that in any way would result in my receiving such a grant.
I blame my elementary school teachers. They were the ones who first put into my head the idea that I was "gifted," that I had all of this potential to do great things. The combination of this kind of encouragement, coupled with the fact that I really hadn't had to do much to earn their praise (you know, like study), set me on my path to lazy ambition. When I was in sixth grade I learned that high school valedictorians had to give speeches, and I was terrified, because of course I'd have to do it, and I hated talking in front of groups. Six years of minimal effort later, I was honestly a little surprised to find myself barely cracking the top ten. Not bad by any means, but there certainly weren't any impending speeches looming.
Last week I discovered that Google is the MySpace of people who have actually achieved something. My brief flirtation with MySpace didn't yield any useful information about people I was actually interested in, but typing their names into the ubiquitous search engine pulled up all kinds of information about what they did in college and what they're doing now. (Side note: It was even more interesting to research their spouses -- apparently our valedictorian, the Maryland-based teacher with the advanced French degree, was in Chicago in the recent past because her husband was becoming an Anglican minister at the U of C divinity school.) No one seems to have left me horribly in the dust; in fact, the person that I considered my creative writing competition seems to be working as a library assistant at the U of C science library. He's probably getting a PhD there, unlike this library assistant, but at least he hasn't won any Pulitzers.
On the other hand, yesterday I read some snippet in the Tribune about a panel discussion of the Harry Potter series with some people who have well-known Potter fan sites, and one of the participants was an editor from Arthur A. Levine, the series' American publisher. She had one of the most common names ever, except that they also ran a picture, and between the two, I realized that she was one of my classmates at the Publishing Institute. Which shouldn't be much of a surprise, considering why we were there, and how she actually went to New York to break into children's publishing while I moved to St. Louis and waited to be discovered from afar. But how dare she be so successful?
I think my problem isn't just with always seeing the rough drafts -- it's also with always looking back on the alternate drafts, the ones that I never really did much with, but that I never threw away, either. I'm not sure where I got the idea that my life was some kind of choose-your-own-adventure novel, but every time I read one of these alumni notes or hear through the grapevine about the accomplishments of someone I used to compete with (at least in theory) in elementary or high school, I mentally shuffle through these old drafts -- the one where I got my PhD, the one where I moved to New York and got a job at a major publisher -- and compare them to my real life, which always seems to come up short.
Everything is a choice, obviously, at least for those of us who are lucky enough to have supportive families and excellent educations and loads of potential just waiting to be exploited. The part that ultimately bothers me is looking back at those choose-your-own-adventure moments and revisiting my utter lack of preparation for them -- suddenly thinking, as a junior or senior in college, that maybe I should study abroad or write an honors thesis. Registering for my final semester of library school yesterday and thinking that, hey, maybe I would have benefited from actually making an appointment with my academic advisor at some point over the last two years. Finding myself eleventh in my high school class in the runup to graduation and thinking, hm, maybe I should have studied for some of those math and science classes.
Don't get me wrong -- it's not necessarily that I regret the choices that I have made, since most of those seem to have turned out okay. And who knows if those other paths would have worked out any better. The frustrating thing is realizing that ambition without effort only gets you so far, and wondering what a little extra work and preparation might have yielded.
Sounds like an oxymoron, right? But I think it's true. To me, the moment that says it all was when I read that a college classmate of mine had received a Fulbright grant. She was a fellow journalism student; I graduated at the top of our journalism class; therefore, my first thought was "Why didn't I get a Fulbright?" Um ... maybe because I didn't apply? Or, you know, come up with a plan of study, or really learn a foreign language, or do anything that in any way would result in my receiving such a grant.
I blame my elementary school teachers. They were the ones who first put into my head the idea that I was "gifted," that I had all of this potential to do great things. The combination of this kind of encouragement, coupled with the fact that I really hadn't had to do much to earn their praise (you know, like study), set me on my path to lazy ambition. When I was in sixth grade I learned that high school valedictorians had to give speeches, and I was terrified, because of course I'd have to do it, and I hated talking in front of groups. Six years of minimal effort later, I was honestly a little surprised to find myself barely cracking the top ten. Not bad by any means, but there certainly weren't any impending speeches looming.
Last week I discovered that Google is the MySpace of people who have actually achieved something. My brief flirtation with MySpace didn't yield any useful information about people I was actually interested in, but typing their names into the ubiquitous search engine pulled up all kinds of information about what they did in college and what they're doing now. (Side note: It was even more interesting to research their spouses -- apparently our valedictorian, the Maryland-based teacher with the advanced French degree, was in Chicago in the recent past because her husband was becoming an Anglican minister at the U of C divinity school.) No one seems to have left me horribly in the dust; in fact, the person that I considered my creative writing competition seems to be working as a library assistant at the U of C science library. He's probably getting a PhD there, unlike this library assistant, but at least he hasn't won any Pulitzers.
On the other hand, yesterday I read some snippet in the Tribune about a panel discussion of the Harry Potter series with some people who have well-known Potter fan sites, and one of the participants was an editor from Arthur A. Levine, the series' American publisher. She had one of the most common names ever, except that they also ran a picture, and between the two, I realized that she was one of my classmates at the Publishing Institute. Which shouldn't be much of a surprise, considering why we were there, and how she actually went to New York to break into children's publishing while I moved to St. Louis and waited to be discovered from afar. But how dare she be so successful?
I think my problem isn't just with always seeing the rough drafts -- it's also with always looking back on the alternate drafts, the ones that I never really did much with, but that I never threw away, either. I'm not sure where I got the idea that my life was some kind of choose-your-own-adventure novel, but every time I read one of these alumni notes or hear through the grapevine about the accomplishments of someone I used to compete with (at least in theory) in elementary or high school, I mentally shuffle through these old drafts -- the one where I got my PhD, the one where I moved to New York and got a job at a major publisher -- and compare them to my real life, which always seems to come up short.
Everything is a choice, obviously, at least for those of us who are lucky enough to have supportive families and excellent educations and loads of potential just waiting to be exploited. The part that ultimately bothers me is looking back at those choose-your-own-adventure moments and revisiting my utter lack of preparation for them -- suddenly thinking, as a junior or senior in college, that maybe I should study abroad or write an honors thesis. Registering for my final semester of library school yesterday and thinking that, hey, maybe I would have benefited from actually making an appointment with my academic advisor at some point over the last two years. Finding myself eleventh in my high school class in the runup to graduation and thinking, hm, maybe I should have studied for some of those math and science classes.
Don't get me wrong -- it's not necessarily that I regret the choices that I have made, since most of those seem to have turned out okay. And who knows if those other paths would have worked out any better. The frustrating thing is realizing that ambition without effort only gets you so far, and wondering what a little extra work and preparation might have yielded.
posted by Madame Defarge at 11:41 AM
2 Comments:
Motivation is a renewable energy.
I absolutely love that quote. Of course, I kind of modified Gore’s original statement from An Inconvenient Truth, which was, “political will is a renewable energy,” which made us erupt into a thunderous applause, but I love the idea either way. I’m thinking of making it into a poster and hanging it on my classroom wall.
I remember when I was in high school my dad giving me a pep talk. He said that when you’re young, the door of opportunities is wide open, and each year that goes by, it closes a little bit more each time. It actually had the reverse affect as intended, and it depressed me quite a bit. But I understood the sentiment.
Unfortunately, we can’t go back and change decisions we’ve made.
I’ve made some doozie decisions in my classroom. Some have worked out well, others have worked out poorly. Do you know what it’s like to have a student hate you? To have you burned into their minds as this vision of a monster about which they’ll spend the next ten years of their life bitching and exaggerating stories? And I know they will, because that’s what I did with the teachers I hated. Sometimes I hated them for some nervous tick they had, or others because they made some remark that I didn’t like. Now I have nothing but sympathy for them. I sit at nights thinking how there are people out there who genuinely hate me, letting this pit form in the middle of my stomach, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
But going back to my word du jour – learn. If I’ve learned one thing in this whole teaching process is that you have the right to start over at any time. You have the right to clear the slate and begin again. I think that’s amazing about our species. No matter how many times we get kicked in the teeth, we’re ready to get up and do it again. We seem to have an eternal well of fresh starts and new leaves. I’ve spent the last 3 hours retyping notes for a grammar lesson, because I know it wasn’t good before. And I feel better about it. And damn it, If I want to take up a new hobby and suddenly want to learn underwater basket weaving, then I’ll find the nearest fucking university that offers it.
I think that’s one benefit about my profession. Every year I’m afforded the opportunity to realize that clean slate. I get time off to breath and relax and get bored and find a new spring of motivation. I think we all need that really. The opportunity to find time to find a fresh start.
Maybe we should be more like France. They have 8 weeks of vacation a year.
So yes, motivation is a factor, but it’s motivation today that matters more than yesterday. I wish I would have been thinner, and studied abroad, and done a master’s program, or gotten into acting, or singing or dancing, but I didn’t. I still could though. I was bitching about not learning French properly to Mike the other day, and he suggested I go to Quebec for one of those immersion programs. Realistically, I’m too lazy for that, and not that I need his permission, but I love knowing that if I really wanted to, I could. I think if you want something bad enough, you can do it, and you do it. But I guess sometimes it’s even harder to figure out what you really want than to go out and do it. But hell, if we can at least laugh about it, I think we’re on the right track.
In other news: I’m terribly depressed. I just heard Tony Blair use “stay the course” in his speech at the White House with Bush. I used to think at least he was intelligent. Maybe the pods took over his body.
Oh yeah, and I saw the Aristocrats. Disgusting joke. I thought by filthy they meant naughty, but it turns out they just meant gross. I think they could have done the whole documentary in 10 minutes. The funniest version of the joke was done by, of all people, the characters from South Park. I guess that’s fitting though.
Amen to all that. Especially The Aristocrats. I was so disappointed by the joke. I was expecting it to at least be funny. Sigh.
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