After my psychotic episode in 2011, most of my readership disappeared, which was only natural because I wrote about the crazy shit rattling around in my brain, I was paranoid, delusional and also hallucinating--and for whatever god forsaken reason, I put it all down in blogs. Almost everyone left. After that episode and after the ECT treatments, which affected my cognitive function a long with my memory, perhaps even causing permanent brain damage (I read rumors of that side effect every now and again, usually by those opponents of the treatment), I felt like I couldn't write at the level to entertain an audience, and was fairly sure that level of finesse would never come back to me.
Despite Stanford's insistence that I return to writing, I begrudgingly wrote a few sentences about my time at the hospital in a paper bound journal, but nothing more. The doctors and nurses would come to me, asking me if I had written, and what I wrote about--determined to force me to "put pen to paper," as the English instructor would say. I resented that they wanted me to create when I had no creativity anymore to share.
When the staff at Stanford University hospital suggested in the late winter of 2016 that I return to college--again, I resented them and their encouragements. I couldn't perform at the college level anymore, I had proven that by failing out of the University, and similarly failing several courses at the community college. One of my psychiatrists, who was local, told me I would continue to fail, and the research psychiatrist at Stanford, who performed the ECT, insisted that college was not for me--it wasn't "flexible" enough.
So, instead of standing up for myself during January of 2016 while I was hospitalized, and telling those Stanford doctors that I refused, I enrolled. I picked the easiest course I could, a basic English class--where I luckily met the English instructor.
There are many reasons why I like the English instructor, why I even went to the English division chair with a multiple paragraph warm glow of admiration and praise, but perhaps, as often in life, it is the first impression that I find to be the most striking (I've written about him during the first class of Engl 156, how he seemed preoccupied, and was undoubtedly frowning while trying to get the computer to work in the front of the class--how I felt like exiting at that very moment and never going back). I took a huge risk with my first writing assignment, writing about being a prostitute, someone with mental illness, and also about my romantic relationship with a married man. The English instructor never judged me--or if he did, he was polite enough to keep his opinions about my unlikely lifestyle to himself. He was, however, not satisfied with one draft, he kept after me to review, revise and then turn in again. Along the way, I found my voice--I felt like I was accomplishing something, the first time in a long time to have such a sense of self.
I saved his remarks and grading on my final draft, as I've saved all of them. On this one particularly, though, he wrote that my essay was "easily" one of the best he's ever read. I wasn't sure at the time if he meant in class, of students, or if he meant ever in his whole reading life, including me along with the greats of short story writers. I never asked--because that's not important.
If Engl 156 had gone south, I would have left the class, withdrawn, and would not have returned to college, possibly ever.
I often disagree with the English instructor, especially during discussions with the journal topics. I understand students have their own disinterested opinions on subjects that reveals their prejudice and bias and what could even be seen as their hatred, but the English instructor, never in class, corrects them nor does he ever blatantly disagree with them (the closest he's come is in correcting me because I said my classmates were "white and privileged"). He lets them have their way for a few minutes. I find that to be infuriating, which I can say now that I have passed his two classes without favoritism. I understand that the English instructor is hoping to create an open dialogue with the students, to teach them to formulate their own stances on different ideas without swaying them either way. I find this to be ideological, but wrong in practice. Assholes say asshole things, and someone should stand up to them, and reply with a logical, cold argument without name calling (ironic, right? Since I just call them "assholes"). Someone in the front of the class, where the argument is more likely to be received. Of course, never have I found that the English instructor was particularly disturbed by anything that the students were saying. He never revealed his political orientation, or any of his personal or political views. Most professors come into class with firmly held beliefs, which they promote their points of view venomously. The English instructor remains to be one of the few exceptions.
What is interesting, and not immediately obvious, is the fact that while the English instructor keeps his opinions tightly held to his chest, from my personal conversations with him, and because of his writing, I know that he thinks about these ideas (and others) often and intimately. His aloofness is not a product of any innocence or naivete on his part (much less ignorance). It's more likely a function of his every day armor. While I disagree with letting students say anything that comes to their mouth without proper recourse, I can admire a man who does not get himself dirty (nor diminished in any way) by trying to dig out the dirty deeds of the common eighteen year old. Perhaps he no longer views them as children, and therefore feels no need to reprimand them.
And so reminds me of my greatest difficulty in returning to school--not my performance, which I thought would hold me back, but it was my relationship with my fellow students which caused the most stress and second-guessing. I thought multiple times of withdrawing from both Engl 156 and Engl 201A because of my classmates. I was, and remain to be, appalled at their conservative talk, which almost seems humorously infantile--and perhaps I'm the only one who sees them as the kids who they truly are. In that sense, the English instructor holds more respect for them, sees a brighter future in them, and has more hope.
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