Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
“ALICE IN WONDERLAND” ~ Lewis Carroll
Out of my inbox…
Brendan Meyer came into my orbit his last year at Mizzou. Charming. Creative. Cocky. And a bit caught up in the notion of where he wanted to be instead of the steps along the road to getting there.
He graduated from the J-school last year with limitless ambitions and dreams (ESPN! Sports Illustrated!), limited experience and limited traction. But he took butt-kicking pretty well, from me and others at the School of J.
It seems his tires have caught — that traction thing — and, in the parlance of where he is now, he is finding the cattle beneath his hat.
I cringe when I think of the practical wisdom buried in years of disorganized and deleted email exchanges.
I’ll send up a flare when I’m struggling with a deadline project and get quick help back from some generous soul who knows stuff I don’t. That’s a whole lot of souls.
Or I’ll get a ping from a student, journalist or first-time Thanksgiving dinner cook desperate for some career or craft counsel. The pleas pile up my inbox. I scan, reply best I can, hit SEND – then move on. As Jed Bartlett would say, “What’s next?”
Incoming, Outgoing. And over time, a trove of lost treasure.
I spent way too much time fretting about my “teaching philosophy,” which I finally had to file with the University of Missouri after 15 years of teaching here, and which you can read about in my previous post. The actual writing of it was a chore, as writing can be. Thinking about it brought joy because it allowed me to think about the amazing teachers, of all stripes, I’ve had in my life.
And, as these things tend to do, it raised my radar for related things. Like this tribute by John Dickerson, published in Slate, to his 10th grade English teacher, Neal Tonken.
The University (in the capital-U sense) wants my “teaching philosophy.” Reasons for that request are happy, which isn’t always the case with a cap-U request. But happy doesn’t get the work done. So…
First: Thank God and Whoever Else had more important things to attend to while I taught at Missouri for 15 years without figuring that bit out.
Second: Even greater thanks, with apologies, to the students on the receiving end of me figuring it out as I go. And a deep bow to the Missouri Method – learn by doing – which doesn’t end with students.
Third: I have to write something. Cue anxiety, procrastination, much abuse of the F-word, coffee and wine.
I’ve been in mourning this week about the Packers’ loss to the Seahawks. I’ll get over that. Maybe not by Super Bowl Sunday, but someday. What I’m not over, and never will be, is the loss of Deborah Howell, my fiercest editor-foe-fan-believer. She died five years ago in New Zealand, when she popped out of(…)
In my second official act of 2015, I committed to committing some words to this space, which has sat waiting for some months now, nagging me to write … I’m not sure what. But as editors know, and writers often forget, the simple act of writing is usually what it takes to figure out what to write.
I’ve read studies that claim a direct connection between the movement involved in writing and the part of the brain that writes. I know I think differently – with more clarity, mindfulness and memory – with a pen in my hand and paper to hold my scribbles. And I have anxious memories of sitting at my keyboard in the newsroom, facing deadline with a crowded mind and blank computer screen, and finally just letting my fingers go – “Mary had a little lamb.” “The quick brown fox jumped over some kind of fence.” “This is a story about…” – until those restless fingers found a rhythm that cornered my mind and the letters gave shape to precise words that formed meaningful sentences that became the path through my thicket of notes and quotes and factoids to reveal a true story.