We all know that kind of disappointment, the kind that feels like defeat or complete failure. It seems to engulf our world, to be a lens through which we view everything hereafter. For at least some period of time, we’re sure we’ll never see the bottom of it and so never be able to climb back out of it. Like the pressure at the bottom of the sea, it seems to press in from all directions as if it has a conscious will, a desire to compress us into nothingness.
It’s been a long time since I felt that because to feel that kind of complete desolate disappointment, one has to be really young. With age comes experience, which brings perspective. We learn to say things like, “Well, this is troubling, but it’s not the end of the world.” But when we’re young, those huge disappointments feel like they are in some way the end of the world.
A young lady whom I’ve had the privilege of teaching this year applied for the creative writing program and the fine arts center here in town, hoping to get one of the six available slots for the next school year. She is a gifted writer, an avid and curious reader, and a thoughtful conversationalist — all the things you’d look for in a budding writer. She asked me to write a recommendation for her. My first draft was my “what I’d really like to say but won’t because it’s over the top” version:
In my more than twenty years in the classroom, E stands out already after only one semester as one of the most gifted and hardest working students I’ve ever encountered. She is an endlessly creative writer with a mastery of language that belies her young age. She is more determined, more mature, and more insightful than just about any other eighth grader I’ve ever met, and she has a true gift in the arts, both acting and writing. In short, I can’t think of any student in my experience who deserves the chance at the Fine Arts Center more than E, and I can’t think of any student whose later accomplishments could possibly bring more joy and honor to the school.
This young lady will be one day a renowned, respected, and imitated author, and quite honestly she will do it with or without your help: that’s how good, how dedicated, how determined she is. Admit E, and in so doing, not only will you give an incredibly gifted young writer a much-deserved headstart in her writing career but also you will give your faculty members and the student body a most incredible and memorable gift.
The latter half was way too much and probably would have hurt her chances more than helped, so it was gone long before the final draft was ready. Still, it’s what I felt — what I still feel.
This morning, I got an email from her mother explaining that she did not get admitted to the program. She was emailing me on the sly, she said, and I took that to mean I was to feign ignorance, which I did.
She came in fourth period and said nothing. She was not quite her usual self, but she certainly wasn’t a typical pouty eighth grader who refuses to work and sits with her emotions smeared all over her face. At the end of the day, I teach her again, this time journalism/creative nonfiction. The random-student-picker app I use popped her name up very first when I began one-on-one consultations, and she finally let me know what had happened.
“Where do I go from here?” seemed to be her concern. “How can I get better at writing if I have no one to teach me?”
“You get better at writing by doing two simple things,” I replied. “Writing and reading. Reading and writing.” That’s not quite true: there’s more to it than that, and a good instructor can be invaluable at providing feedback. But none of the writers we see as great had formal training in creative writing: Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevski, Twain — none of them took creative writing courses, yet they serve as the core of Western literature.
No, I don’t worry about this young lady at all. She’s determined, gifted, and curious — that’s all she needs.
Random Photograph
