This semester, I took what turned out to be my favorite class at Kenyon: Writing Fiction, Nonfiction, and Other Narrative Forms with Professor Katharine Weber. To be completely honest, I applied on a whim and was shocked when I was accepted to the class. While I obviously love writing (I mean, I write for Her Campus, don’t I?), taking a class that included a significant fiction component felt like a huge stretch.
The first day of class, Professor Weber started off by announcing, “There were 57 people who applied for this class. Do not make me disappointed that I chose you.” At that moment, I felt like I was going to die. I thought that I must be there by some mistake, and I knew that it was an honor to be in that room, but oh gosh…
However, as the first seminar went on, I was still nervous, but I also knew that this was why I came to Kenyon: to be challenged, to work hard, to grow. I left Sunset Cottage that day with two thoughts: “This class is going to kick my butt,” and “I’m excited!”The class has kicked my butt. And, it also hasn’t. The workload has been intense. At this point, I’ve learned to condense the workload into eight to ten hours a week, but at the beginning, I would sometimes spend fifteen hours keeping up with all of the reading, writing, and revising that the class demanded. Somehow, though, even though the workload was intense, and I made it worse by agonizing over every sentence that I wrote, I enjoyed doing it. Many weeks, I would spend Friday and Monday afternoons at Happy Bean Coffee writing. I’ve worked harder for this class than almost any other, but it made me happy.
Halfway through the semester, however, I had an assignment that terrified me. We had to take a sign that we saw over spring break and write a poem and an editorial (published to Her Campus here) inspired by that same sign. Now, I had written poetry in high school, but it was angsty, fueled by the immature misery of being a teenager, and of various levels of quality. I was definitively NOT a poet, and I even complained to my best friend about it. But as I was writing the poem, something changed. I began to like what I was writing. By the time I was done, I had written something that was actually really good! I had enjoyed writing it, and I’d enjoyed what I’d written, and suddenly I was a poet again! I’ve written four poems since then. I had given up on poetry because I wasn’t angsty anymore and I didn’t think that I was good at it anyway. But, it was an assignment, so I had to give poetry another chance, and when I did, I fell in love with it all over again.I think that the greatest gift that my creative writing class gave me was the chance to be an amateur again. I had grown complacent in my upper-level music and religious studies classes. I knew what I was doing; I had a generally good idea of everything that was going on, and, truth be told, I wasn’t really being pushed or challenged. Last year, I spent most of my time memorizing facts, reading articles, and writing research papers. I had lost the wonder of discovering something new and unknown, and the fun of being pulled outside of my comfort zone. Once a week, on Tuesday afternoons, I got to experiment, take risks, try things, and I felt okay with not always having all of the answers. I didn’t need to have everything perfect and figured out, so I could push the envelope, ask questions, and make reading notes saying, “I have no idea what’s going on here.” The class was a gift because it reminded me of the curiosity and fun that’s supposed to be a part of learning.
Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone go and take a creative writing class. You know what’s right for you. But what I am suggesting is that you try something new. Don’t be afraid to be an amateur. Take a class or start an activity that is outside of your comfort zone. It may not become your favorite thing like it did for me, but it’s worth the risk.
Image Credit: Maggie Griffin