Two Corollaries

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Those who can't teach, must therefore do

I am a good writer, and any mettle-worthy English teacher needs to be able to mould good writers.

Moulding good writers does not appear to come naturally to me. In large part that is due to the second corollary, but we'll get there later.

I think I might be a better teacher if I taught something other than my forte. I'ld probably be better off teaching history, for instance.

Or just getting out of this entire crazy profession and writing for a living. I don't know.

A good student doth not a good teacher make

I was a pretty good student. Frustrating to many of my teachers, but overall good.

Much of that goodness was engineered by my choice of classes, of course. I often wish I had studied something totally outside my natural skills. Learning the exciting field of mechanical engineering, for instance, would have stretched me. Studying English was too intuitive, too natural, too inborn, too easy.

Because it was just unearned skill that made me a good student, I haven't actually learned crap in years. I just play the same old lousy game and call it good. And it is good. But when I have never had to learn how to become good, I have no idea how to teach becoming good.

"What do you mean you can't write an earth-shattering conclusion?!?!" I might ask in shocked abhorrence. "Why not? Art thou not human? Hath not a human eyes? hath not a human hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick a human, do they not bleed? if you tickle them, do they not laugh? if you poison them, do they not die? and if you put a pen in their hands, do they not write wicka strong essays with wicka strong conclusions?"

My great problem is--since I have always looked at academic writing as a fun hobby--I have never examined it with the cruelty I have examined fiction, and so I find it difficult to explain or to teach.

I suppose when I take a class in writing pedagogy this will change, but....

It might not. Like I said: I haven't learned anything in years. I don't know how to apply myself to study and learn.

The fact is, I am a terrible student. And if I can't do student, what in the world makes me think I can teach the doing of student?

Note: this post is not born of a particularly bad day or anything of the sort. In fact, these are issues I've been thinking about for a long time. These are where they stand at the moment. I am continually considering and revising and rethinking and trying to figure out just what the heck I want to be when I grow up. I need to hurry. I turn thirty this summer.