WFMAD 1: Dreams
August 1, 2009
Classrooms, student conferences, committee meetings. All my subconscious can think about is finding a teaching job–or maybe more accurately, actually having one. I seem to have great students, great classes, a wonderful department. Unfortunately they are only in my dreams.
I seem to be teaching very cool things in these dreams, like writing online, business writing for the web, how to blog or use wikis. Stuff I’d LOVE to teach. I see so many missed opportunities when I browse around online, and I wish I could take those writers aside and show them how making a few changes would make a me major difference in meeting their goals. I seem to be doing just that in my dreams.
Beyond that I can’t really remember any specifics. I know that the committee meetings and impromptu discussions with colleagues are all important, but I don’t recall a whole lot about the conversations. The meetings always go well. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember much other than a feeling of getting things done and being in the glow of good teaching.
I miss teaching so much. The longer I go without a job, the more I wonder why I ever left the classroom at all. Maybe you have to stop doing something to realize why it matters. Maybe your “life’s work” isn’t obvious till you get some distance from it, look back, and recognize that ‘hey, THAT is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”
It’s that time of year when people are gearing up for fall classes. I envy them. I want to work on my syllabus, think about writing assignments, preview the books that we’ll read together. I guess that’s the point of these dreams in a way. I’m not getting ready for a class in the conscious world, so my dreams are getting me ready in the subconscious one. When I finally find a job, I should be quite ready, having taught so much in my dreams these last few weeks.
WFMAD stands for “Writing for Fifteen Minutes a Day.” Author Laurie Halse Anderson