The Exhaustion of the College Teacher

I will not wax poetic about the depth and breadth of my pathetic exhaustion that involves making cookies for my Creative Writing class, suffice it to say: we're all bleeping tired. But my little darlings read their manifestos today, and I have to say, I'm impressed. They all complained, but they all wrote brilliant accounts of why they write. Hooray for the Manifesto!

In other news, I handed out a list of recommended reading and viewing to them. On the other side was a list of inspirational quotations that have seen me through the hard times. I give you a selection now:

• How emblematic are the unexpressed lives of other women to the woman poet. Eavan Boland
• You have to make the leap alone. Ron Carlson
• For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them. Thich Nhat Hanh

In compiling quotations for the handout, I remembered a few things I often forget in the mad dash that sometimes passes for my life. I need to remember why I write in the first place. And I need to arrange my life so that, every once in a while, I find myself sitting at the computer with an idea. Mostly I remembered that if I want to finish the novel, I need to get out of the way. Those Buddhists, they really know what they are talking about.