So I went to my first day of class and within the first class I had managed to completely and utterly humiliate myself. During free write, our creative writing professor wanted to focus on non-fiction and the prompt was, "what are you doing here?" Where everyone wrote about how much they wanted to be there to begin to write and told a little bit about themselves, I wrote a fiction free write. And then I read it aloud and everyone was completely freaked out. NON-FICTION!!! I just wrote what came to me, I didn't even consider the parameters, I just wrote.
Everyone stared, wide-eyed in disbelief. I could hear people blushing for me. The prof, who I believe is wonderful, just stared and tried to smile through pursed lips. Was I in fact married to a Tupperware salesman with sclerosis of the liver? Were we a broke family trying to keep it together?
Only after coming home did I realize why people were acting so awkward.
If it were a true story, it would have been really uncomfortable, which is what they believed. I doubt that I'll ever read aloud in class again. Right now, I just want to drop the class.
Isn't a free write a 'free' write? Why can't we write whatever pops into our little heads? I know what I did was wrong,(given that free write is only as free as the boundaries set upon it) and only now do I realize it. I am counting down the minutes until my 5 o'clock glass of wine.
I know that I'm being a bit histrionic. Okay, really histrionic. But there I was making a first impression to my peers and they think I'm an absolute nut.
So, while I'm writing this I'm needing a bit of advice. What do I do? Do I run away from the embarrassment? Or like Scarlett O'Hara, dance with Rhett in the low cut antithesis-of-a-mourning dress of shame across the floor, trying to maintain the scraps of dignity I have left with grace and poise?
Or maybe I'll just dye my hair, or sit uni-bomber style in the back row. Or maybe, just maybe, not get so overly invested. Ah! lightbulb.
I hindsight, this was probably the biggest lesson I have learned in a while; to be objective, listen to the guidelines and not take other people's opinions to heart, or at least not as deeply as I did.
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you didn't answer by explaining how the roadrunner always "foils" wile e coyote. Aloud and with much pride!
As for advice, you should just think of how you can turn the situation on its head.
For example, when it's time for a fictional free write, write about a student who mistook a Non Fiction Free Write for Fiction Free Write and went on to read a story about a woman who was in fact married to a Tupperware salesman with sclerosis of the liver.... (and go nuts with the uncomfortably embarrassing details, of course)
: )
When he handed the papers back, I was surprised to see he had given it an A-. I asked him after class if there was some mistake - he said there was: he had intended to give it an A. So there was humiliation (in front of my peers), but there was also vindication.
Don't sweat the small stuff!
It's my first day back to the old higher education after years of lower education- much lower education. Toddlers can teach you a lot.
Mary- I think I might have to play on my weaknesses and expand on my foibles. Let's move down from Tupperware- whats lower than Tupperware?
Thanks Ash ;)
I'm gonna do it Karen- the Tupperware husband ( who is really a deep sea diver, I can't help but add the truth)