My eye won’t stop twitching ….

In response to Little Biscuit Whore’s post  the other day about forgetting everything he learned in Wegnerd’s Communications class, I, too, seem to have forgotten everything from the entire program! Ever since the grad ceremony, it feels as if all the knowledge gained, both practical and creative, is seeping out of my pores as the seconds tick-tock onwards. That’s when it seemed to all happen. And that is why I promply registered for two courses after our final exams last semester, to keep my mind perky and grammatically sound. But, as soon as my security blanket of regular teachers and classmates vanished, so did my smarts. I feel like an alcoholic out of rehab. How fitting, since all we did was drink after each Thursday night class. 

I noticed the affliction last Friday when I was editing my Historical Fiction Creative Writing classmates’ character scenes. Feeling like the ever-so-clever-the freshly-graduated-writing student, I blissfully marked up with red pen the contraction  “it’s”, using the delete squiggle over top of the apostrophe. I did the opposite for possessive “its,” inserting a bright red caret with a glaring apostrophe over top of the humble little word. Then I started thinking: Is this correct? I had to be right, after all! I questioned my classmate, whom I doubted since she constantly told me her grammar sucked. She said I had it wrong. I Googled it. To my horror, she was right and I was wrong! The shame I felt  was nauseating as I hurriedly scribbled a straggly “Sorry!” in each margin of the papers I had violated.  

Then to get my character scene ripped to shreds in Creative Writing. I was sneakily trying to make a non-fiction piece into fiction, and in doing so, the genius that I am, I forgot to change my own name in the piece!  I must admit, I only worked on it the night before, completely lost as how to write a fictional character scene from scratch and trying to get away with passing off an older piece thinking, “This’ll do. This is old hat compared the shit I did in Wegnerd’s class!” Oh, the mockery of it all as eighteen-year-olds lacerated my delicate prose. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, I got an A – , but it is humbling and a little degenerative being in a class with people so much younger that are actually quite good writers.  I want to smack the pompous dude. He never shuts up and is way to picky in his criticisms, ripping everyone’s work to shreds, getting upset about italicizing thoughts and using phrases like “four blocks North” and “years later.”

Ah well, it’s all a learning process, and I’m gonna have to get used to not being in my comfy old shoes that I’ve been wearing over the past two-and-a-half years. It’s soothing to read my classmates’ blogs though. All my sense of worry and panic melts away when their affable voices share how they are feeling the same way, stumbling through the cacophonous job market and bad interviews, feeling awkward calling ourselves writers when people ask what we do.

Hopefully the brambly path ahead of us will clear as we find our way and we will stop dreaming of thong pies (see Meladuck) and eating our feet. Yes, I dreamt I was trying to save money by eating my feet. In the dream it made perfect sense as I knew they’d grow back, like picking leaves or flowers off a plant.