Dear Clue Hunters-
Writing was not in my plans. I love to read…I could read for a majority of my life and be very content. But reading for pleasure would not pay my bills. To be honest when I was in my early teens I contemplated becoming a writer briefly. I was amazed at how authors could put words together to tell stories that would keep me captivated for hours. How did they create these books about far away or imaginary places that contained so much incredible information? For whether it was a fiction or non-fiction book, to me it was learning. We won’t even discuss, yet, how I believed writing dialogue was akin to being tortured on the rack!
So, aside from that brief moment of obvious adolescent delusion, I never allowed writing to be an option for me. Literature would just be something that I would enjoy after the author completed their magical and awesome task of creation.
After twenty years of trying, training and sometimes just falling into different jobs…I found myself feeling stuck. The current job I have DOES pay the bills but is not my dream job. In fact, to me, it is far from the things that I am truly passionate about. It does give me three things I am grateful for…The opportunity to help people, the chance to learn something new and occasionally the ability to really connect with another person and hear their story. But the financial world is too ‘material’ for me. I do not enjoy office politics nor do I crave advancement in the corporate arena. So I felt stuck.
I had dreamed of teaching religious history as a college professor. The one detriment, in my mind, was the writing I would have to do- because remember, I do not have those magic skills that authors have. But I plowed on. My passion for learning was being fulfilled, my hope to help others understand religious differences and therefore make a difference in our world was a possibility and my Harvard professors were giving me A’s. Twice, I attempted to commit to this plan for my life and twice, I felt my lack of writing skills thwarted me.
I submitted my application for Divinity School and was rejected. Have you ever felt like your soul has been crushed? I was not wise enough to realize that I was being presented with the opportunity to learn. Demolished cannot begin to describe how I felt, being a professor hit so many targets for me AND I even had evidence from my professors that they felt I was good enough….so how come I was rejected. I was numb and went through the motions for the next few months when it suddenly dawned on me…my writing- that was where I had failed. Writing was my weakness.
I decided to lower my expectations and felt my path would be through the extension school. There is a writing course that must be passed with a B grade in order to get into the extension school for matriculation. If a student could not achieve that after trying twice they would not be able to apply for admission into the program. I had taken the class once and had achieved a B-. With my previous class experience and getting a writing tutor, I knew that even with my obvious ineptitude with the written word…I could do well enough to get the B needed. I was aware that I would have to tackle the writing monster at some point but my main goal was getting into the program.
Our first class meeting we had to hand in an example of a piece of our writing. During the second class the professor met with us individually to go over our strengths and weaknesses to focus on in the course. The second class came and the professor called one classmate after another as I sat waiting. I was nervous but also knew it was the start of the semester however horrible I had done there was time to learn and grow. Several more classmates had their meetings and it was getting towards the end of class. So many thoughts were flying through my head. Did he forget about me? Was my writing example THAT bad? Or maybe I was crazy and it wasn’t that bad?? Should I say something to him if he doesn’t call me? What does this mean? What should I do?
Just as class ended the professor came up to me and asked me to stay after class. I broke into a cold sweat. We waited for my fellow classmates to leave…as they looked at me strangely when they walked past. I truly was in a place of panic. The professor sat down in front of me and told me that he knew this was my “last” chance to get into the program since I had taken the class once before. He had sat down with my previous professor and discussed my writing sample. At this time they felt that I needed to get more remedial training before I attempted to take this class and they thought it would be best if I dropped it and tried at a later time. I thanked the professor for his time and walked out.
I was grateful it was nighttime and that the campus was dark. As I walked through the place I thought of as a second home, I sobbed. I felt rejected, humiliated and crushed once again from the place I thought would make my dreams come true. My soul ached and I believed I had been given evidence, twice now, that I was not good enough and never would be. My dream would not come true. I was so consumed with my ‘failure’ I couldn’t see anything else.
So no, writing was not in my plans.