Boom: The Problems of Being Poor and Being Ignored

The Pain Managment Clinic was unruly. There were two small waiting rooms, one inside and one outside. They were packed with mostly elderly folks, some in wheelchairs. There were quite a few people filling out new patient packages, which I took as a sign of a high turnover.

Before I ever even saw the doctor, I had to take a piss test.

I had a bad feeling going into this because I had seen the Indian doctor (as in "India") before, sometime during 2008--and I never returned, which is a good indication that I didn't like the man. My mother, along with other people, as they've commented over the years, insist that I simply don't get along well with doctors. There may be some truth to that, but I always clamor that when they treat you like you're stupid, I tend to get upset.

So, a medical assistant takes a quick history of me, the general, typical questions, like where's your pain located, and do you have any other medical illnesses that they should know about (I only admitted to having "anxiety and depression," not wanting to get into my entire psychiatric history).

The doctor comes in, and immediately fusses around with my legs and then asks me to stand up, so he can poke around on my back (which hurt, by the way). He doesn't spend five minutes examining me. "You have some inflammation in your back, and a spasm. Alternate heat and cold. Take over the counter anti-inflammatories, you know, like Tylenol. I can help you by giving you an injection, and then see you in six months."

I know about injections. Veterinarians use them constantly in horses who perform because they quickly alleviate lameness, although the results only last for a few weeks, and ultimately, the corticosteriod injections cause arthritis by damaging the joint they're injected into. So, no, am I going to have an injection? I don't think so. Besides, he's assuming that my pain is caused from the herniated disc, and two doctors already have decided it wasn't likely. "Would you be willing to continue to prescribe Norco?"

"No, with your level of pain, you don't need Norco."

"How would you know what my level of pain is?" I say defensively. I can tell he wasn't prepared for this reaction.

"Because of the results from the MRI's, my examination and I'm a pain management doctor."

I'm immediately thinking every bad thought you can have about someone (short of wishing death or harm). I'm even considering a few racial slurs (when I told my mother this after I returned home, she thought it was funny that her "pacifist liberal" daughter was a racist). "You didn't even examine me for five minutes."

"You don't need the Norco, now, if your GP prescribes you it, that's one thing, but I am going to give him my recommendation."

In other words, fuck you, Jae. I'm sure he feels like he's doing some good, stopping me from becoming a potential drug addict. I mean, fast food kills more people every year than opioids, and my god, does the government do anything to restrict fatty, fried foods and sugary sodas? I can guarantee you that it costs society more to handle the consequences of obesity and an unhealthy diet than it does to put a few thousand people through rehab (if need be). But, alas, who cares about fat people?

So, if Mr. Pain Management Specialist (he doesn't deserve the title of "Dr.") sends my GP a little note, saying that the Norco was unnecessary, that pretty much kills me every getting another opiate, ever, in my whole fucking life.

When it comes to back pain, chronic pain, often you can't see it on an MRI or scan. We haven't developed the technology yet to look at someone and pinpoint exactly where the pain is coming from and why. Someday, probably, but today, and in the near future, pain is a subjective experience. You take two people with the same lumbar spine MRI, and they will have different pain levels (or even one person who has pain, while the other complains of none). Pain is individualized because our brains are unique from person to person (even recently read an article that says the active DNA in each neuron is different). There are, of course, obvious exceptions to this. People with broken bones or cancer. You can see their pain, all lit up like crazy (they now have the ability to see the pain center of the brain in f-MRI's, and the differences between individuals in that). So, how can a doctor look at you for five minutes and determine your level of pain? Well, they can't.

Mr. Pain Management Specialist claimed to have solved a mystery that has taken other doctors months, and they still haven't come up with any answers (doctors like The Neurologist). I mean, isn't that a little arrogant on his part?

The Neurologist's latest idea is that I have fibromyalgia. I know very little about the disorder, just what I've read doing a quick google search, and the stories I've read. But, neverthless, I have almost every symptom, which the exception of the cardinal sign which is joints that when you press on them, they're painful. Besides that, I have it covered. Women with fibromyalgia tend to have painful periods, suffer from sleep disorders, fatigue, anxiety and depression and diffuse pain, spread out all over. What doctors have come up with is that narcotics don't help much. Although, in some cases I read, there was use of opioids anyway. So, I'm going to see yet another doctor to determine if there's anything to this fibromyalgia diagnosis. It's scary, but it fits. Unfortunately for me, all the drugs doctors use to treat this disorder with--I'm already taking.

In the mean time, I'm kind of fucked. I looked up yet another pain management specialist in town, but bouncing from doctor to doctor in search of opioids is seen as a warning sign of abuse or possible addiction. It's called "doctor shopping," and people in the medical profession really frown on it.

Boom: The Problems of Being Poor

I usually make fun of people who do stupid shit like forgetting to check the oil level in their cars, only to have it blow up a few months down the road. I mean, that is stupid, right?

But, anyway, that's what happened. The motor is ruined in my Mazda Tribute, and in all honesty, I only have so much money to replace it with.

I guess that's one lesson learned in life when owning a SUV with more than 250,000 miles.

"Success doesn't change you, but fame does."

--Whitney Houston

I did submit my short story "Rendering" for consideration at the New Yorker (an essay that was largely about the English instructor, and already sent to the New York Times). As my friends at writers' group have already explained, I have a better chance of winning the lottery than having them actually publish it.

The Ugly Things We Never Share, Part IV

"You need to take responsibility for pissing him off," my mother tells me over the phone.

"I am not responsible for how he reacts!"

"I think you're being very judgmental."

I hang up on her.

The Ugly Things We Never Share, Part III

Unless you lived on Mars during your childhood (which, someday, even in my lifetime, may become a reality) or were completely isolated, you know being submerged in fighting and strife early in life affects you greatly and negatively. One the scale of horrible childhoods, mine probably barely matters (my first psychiatrist disagreed with this strongly). So, my parents fought. So, Dad occasionally put a hole in the wall. No one slapped me around, I had enough food to eat, and my parents made sure I got to school every morning.They bought me clothes and horses, and a brand new Camaro for my 16th birthday (which I didn't find to even be that unusual). However, even though psychiatrists have moved away from this model, many have wondered openly what happened during my childhood to cause me to have such severe mental illness. Even the Stanford doctors don't blame it purely on biochemistry or genetics. There might have been a trigger somewhere at some point.

My first psychiatric symptom was anxiety. At a young age, I was obsessed with food-borne illnesses and overwhelmed with a fear of vomiting (which, I found out, wasn't just me--other people deal with that phobia specifically too). I was especially concerned about expiration dates.

Mom comes up to me on Sunday in the kitchen, and asks, "Why don't you put milk in your coffee?"

If there's some in the house, I like to add whipped cream to my coffee. "Because the milk is expired."

She looks in the frig, seeing the milk carton. "Well, that had been frozen."

The expiration date for the milk was over a month ago. "Yes, but no one knows how long it had been frozen or when it was put in the frig."

Over the weekend, my mother comes up to me while I'm in the front room, and says solemnly, "You know, the past two mornings when I walk into your room..." She pauses slightly.

She found rats? A couple of severed heads?

Then continues, "your heating pad was left on...Remember to leave the auto-off on, so you don't forget. I don't want to hear your Dad complain about the two hundred dollar electricity bill again."

When you live with your parents as an adult, you concede to a few realities: one, you can never bring home that guy from the bar, and fuck him in your bed, and two, if you do go out and don't come home at a decent hour, you have to tell your parents at least something or your mother will drill you about your alcohol use mixed with your meds. Three, you have to follow their rules, even when their rules are excessive for someone who is (supposedly) a rational, thinking adult. In exchange, hopefully, you have a more secure supportive network.

The Ugly Things We Never Share, Part II

"So, did Dad tell you anything about last night?" I ask my mother. I called her to see if we could talk about what happened.

"Yeah, he just said that you pissed him off by throwing away his brushes again," she answers.

Shouldn't he have some sense of shame over what he did?

The Ugly Things We Never Share

I perform most of the kitchen cleaning, and I'm usually the only one who disinfects it (I use bleach and 409). I threw away the dish brushes because they were filthy and discolored from who-knows-what, although it's likely it was spaghetti sauce. They were also about six months old, and plastic, which absorbs bacteria and viruses.

I put them in the garbage, and then the next day, found them magically back in the sink. So, as I was cleaning yesterday, I threw them away, again.

"Where are the brushes?" My father asks me while I'm in the other room, hanging up laundry. He's in the kitchen, presumably making dinner.

I knew this was the start of a fight. "In the garbage," I say.

He walks around the corner, and he's facing me as he's yelling, "Goddammit! You had no right to do that! I soaked those in bleach!" His face is red, and he looks threatening. (Just minutes before, he was taking his handgun out of the sleeve, and playing with it.

I asked at the time if it was loaded.

"Yes, of course," he answered then. )

I just stand there, mute. The idea crosses my mind that he could hit me, not that he has ever before. I have no emotional reaction. I finish hanging up the shirts, and then I go back to my homework in the den on the work desk.

What I Want for "But a Whimper"

What I want is for my short story titled "But a Whimper" (from T.S. Eliot) to win the contest for the college's yearly literary journal. In order to do that, I need some feedback. I walked into the Poetry Professor's office before his official office hours, and found him looking at the screen of his laptop that was sitting next to the screen from his desktop, apparently using both at once. "Are you multi-tasking?" I ask him.

"Always," he says with a smile. He talked about how busy he was with grading and with students needing help. He drove to a nearby town, and met up with a student for an hour. "She got an hour's worth of instruction for free." Another student arrives outside his doorway, so he says, "Send me that short story."

I take it as my hint to leave. I did, of course, send the piece to his email account, but realized a day later that he shouldn't do something like that for free. I thought about offering him money directly, but assumed that he wouldn't accept it. So, I sent an email saying that I didn't like the idea of professors working for free, so would he accept me buying him lunch? I hope he didn't read it as me coming on to him, although even if he did, there was probably no harm done.

He replies, "Ha! No worries. It's not for free. I get the street cred of saying, 'I knew her when...' :)"

Which I just thought was overwhelmingly sweet. I've been trying to figure out a way to stay at the community college instead of transferring back to The University (just down the road) or perhaps even going to a UC. I don't know anyone at the University in the English Department, and most of the people I knew in Animal Science, like The Advisor, have retired. VN probably still teaches classes. I would have to start all over again, trying to get to know the faces of the faculty.

Of course, I thought about sending "But a Whimper" to the English instructor, since I value his feedback so much, but I know that he is working three jobs, taking classes himself, and dealing with his personal life. So, asking for him to spend an hour on something he's not getting paid for seemed almost cruel. I thought about offering him a $100 to review and edit it, and saying that he didn't need to meet with me in person, I could drop off payment either through the mail in a form of a check or put it in his faculty box. However, he hasn't responded to my last email, asking him to join the faculty poetry reading contest, so I doubt I will even ask. But $100 for an hour's worth of work (he obviously could spend more time than that, if he wanted) isn't bad money, unless you're a prostitute (in which you should make a lot more than that for "full service"). I couldn't help but find parallels between the two types of work. I realize that most of the time, editing between friends is free or at most, considered a favor repaid by a drink. But I'm not exactly the type of friend to either the English instructor or the Poetry Professor in which you can ask those types of favors.

The Slope, Sliding Down, Part II

"I mean, that's what happens, people get started on prescription drugs because they have some pain, and then when their disorder is supposed to be over, and the doctor stops giving them opioids, they just move on to heroin..." My POLS professor told the class.

Okay, it happens. We know the vast majority of heroin addicts start with prescription opioids. Fair enough. But what is misleading about this statement is that the pain patients aren't the ones getting addicted in the first place. It's the people who steal/borrow pain pills from family members and friends. They get hooked and then move on to heroin (the CDC has research on this).

At the beginning of the argument, I said, "The 'opioid epidemic' is overinflated, especially when you consider that hundreds of thousands die from alcohol abuse and tobacco." The class room suddenly got very noisy.

"Would you like to talk to the sheriff here in [blank] county?" The POLS Professor challenges me.

I could. But he's not a medical doctor nor a researcher, so I'm not sure why his opinion or what he think he observes in the community is really all together that fucking important.

The Slope, Sliding Down

"I'm only going to prescribe one Norco per day," says the GP. "Because it's just a slippery slope...but after you see Pain Managment, it's a different scenario."

Interestingly, we discussed the "opioid epidemic" in POLS class where I was shouted down by my own peers, and the professor (who after he made his argument, told me to speak, and I refused, feeling like it was a lost cause--who am I to educate people who have already made up their minds? And for that matter, am I not just the slightest biased on the whole topic? Luckily, I'm not alone. I know of patient rights groups, chronic pain lobbying groups, who have the same thoughts I do, and are actively trying to save one's ability to find and secure pain relief. Granted, if one of those pharma companies finds some drug that silences pain better than an opioid, they'll be sure to put it on the market with a decent generic a year or more away from coming onto market).

I mean, isn't "slippery slope" just a logic fallacy? Why treat all patients like potential drug addicts? The addiction rate for heroin is at most 18%, still a minority, but a high enough percentage to give anyone pause. I've read from research articles, especially in the early 2000's, that the addiction rate for prescription opioids is as low as 2-3%. I don't believe those numbers, it has to be greater than that, but, well, they are researchers after all. You would like to hope they are not falsifying their data because they are in the back pocket of some drug company.

And who here would say, while screaming in pain at an ER, "Please, don't give me morphine. It's addictive. Give me, hmmm...how about a placebo? Even better, do you have some pot lying around?" 

At Liberty, Part II

It's only funny because it's creepy.

It's okay, I can still flirt with the Poetry Professor, who takes it in stride and finds me slightly charming.

At Liberty

I had a dream about him. I don't believe that our dreams necessarily mean anything. I don't follow Freud, but sometimes I feel they are creative material (I constantly dream I'm a man with a real package and everything--but does that mean I'm trans? Probably not). So, I had this dream. I was in his class, visiting and I refused to look at him. In fact, during the entire dream, I never saw him at all. I was in the back, and I was coloring with real Crayons. At some point, he came up behind me and held me, and then, I realized immediately, that it was a dream--not reality. I highly doubt he would ever do such a thing, but it's even less likely in front of other students.

When I saw him sitting down on the ledge of the bushes, and talking to his students, I wanted to walk up to him, kiss him on the cheek, and say, "Hi, honey, how's work?"

But I'd probably had to deal with the English Division Chair over that one. Some lecture about how I can't harass the good, god-fearin' folk of English professors.

Another B Work? Probably

My creative writing professor looked more distracted than usual.

I stopped by his office during office hours. I could just tell something was wrong. "Are you okay?" His office reminds me slightly of how the Adivsor kept his. There are lots of papers and books, and an eccentric mess. I use to walk into the room to see the Advisor, and be comforted by his disarray. It wasn't military neat (even though the Advisor was in the military); it was normal, human, most of all.

"No," he says while looking at the computer screen. "My father died Saturday."

I had heard stories of his father, how he was starting to lose his wits, and seemed to display some odd behavior. "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. How are you dealing with the news?"

He seems even more despondent. "I can't concentrate. You know, I start to read something, and then my mind wanders..." After we talk for a while, he asks me what I need help with. "You said you wanted to talk about your 99." He assigned an essay that could only be 99 words.

"Yes, I know. I got a B."

"A B is good."

"Yes, but I want an A in the class...I wanted to bring by my short story to see if you had any hints to help me get an A on this assignment."

He reads it, and says flatly, "Well, it's not finished."

It wasn't. I would later finish it, and it would end up to be nine pages (the max. was only supposed to be seven pages). It was about my grandmother, and the more I wrote, the most disgusted I became with the work. It's impossible to explain my grandmother's situation (while she was alive) and her relationship with her kids and her grandchild (me) in seven pages. Somehow, at the end, I'm supposed to put it in perspective, and write some great revelation or at least end it on a good note--like, Grandma died in piece. But she didn't die in peace. She died alone in that awful house, and no matter how many times I say it or write it, that painful thought never becomes any easier to swallow. In many ways, it becomes worse. My parents can't relate to my guilt. They don't understand it, and they don't share it. So, I thought if I wrote a story about how sad she was, how sad she made me, maybe people would realize that she was suffering, and no one did a damn thing about it (including me)--in the story, there's the conversation that I have with her doctor where the doctor told me that Grandma was not suffering. She did, and she died a few months later. (If anyone wants to read the short story titled "But a Whimper," they can, but honestly, the blog entries are better.)

"You need to flesh out the conflict," he continues. "I mean, you say right here, 'I tried to convince my grandmother to move.' "

In the final draft, I deleted that sentence because after nine pages, that part was obvious.

POLS [REVISED]

I can tell he's in a hurry to leave. He came dressed up in a suit, so he probably had to be in court today. "You wanted to talk about the Federalist Papers."

I showed him my book. Flipped through it. 

"I didn't know you were going to read all of them. I thought just the ones in the back of the textbook. No. 51."

"No, I plan on finishing it. It's four hundred pages, and I thought I could get it done over break, but as you can see, that didn't happen...I want to negotiate with you."

He nodded at me.

"How much is this worth to you?" I was referring to extra credit. Watching a movie (with, at the very least, political ideas) and writing a couple page brief is worth 15 extra credit points. I probably could have watched over ten movies with the amount of time that it's taking to read all the Federalist Papers. 

"Well, I mean, it's not someone's interpretation of the material, it's the source document itself, so yeah, I would give it a lot of scholastic value. But you did well on the midterm, you're not going to need extra credit."

POLS Midterm

After handing in my scantron and blue book, I was stopped by the professor .

"It was too easy, wasn't it?"

I was one of the first to finish. "I guess we'll find out."

Today, he told me I had the highest grade in the class (on the multiple choice section; he hasn't graded the essays).

Honestly, I thought I was going to end up with a B-. That white horse question really tripped me up.

Grambo is Dead, Part XI

Grandma appeared to me in a dream, she looked neat, healthy and composed. She was happy to see me. Then, I woke up, and realized all over again that she was gone.

My Theory on Pain Killers, and the Unfortunate Requirement of Being Passed From Doctor to Doctor

After meeting with the Neurosurgeon in Santa Barbara, I decided to try to see someone at the Stanford Pain Management Clinic (I asked to be seen by the doctor Sean Mackey, MD, Ph.D. himself because I've read about him, and watched his lectures, and I'm in love). Unfortunately, the new patient coordinator told me he'd call back in about two or three weeks, and yes, Stanford Pain Managment wouldn't be able to see me until February or even possibly March (he said it would take longer to see Dr. Mackey).

My GP wants to stop prescribing me Norcos because, as he's explained, he's concerned that I'm developing a "dependency" (I've written about this before). So, he's passing me off on a pain management specialist here locally until I can be seen by Stanford. My experience with pain management clinics has not been positive. They see patients in pain (obviously), and I believe that the patients all tend to blend in together after a while. Dr. Mackey has stated (one reason why I love him) that if you don't believe your patient is in pain or don't believe that they are telling the truth about the extent of their pain, you as a doctor shouldn't be treating them, and should send them to someone else. I believe in that wholeheartedly, and wish I had the power and means to make every doctor I see live up to that example. "If you don't believe me, fuck you, send me to someone better."

The Neurologist completed a nerve conduction test on my legs (which, by the way, feels like you're being shocked by an electric fence), and quickly became bored, and said out loud for her notes, "Nothing remarkable." Now, she's debating if I had any neuropathy at all (it was either Dr. Allan Basbaum or Dr. Mackey who said that any time you have a burning, stinging pain, it's neuropathy). If it's not neuropathy, what the fuck is it? The paresthesia is extremely painful, and that symptom alone is worth a several month wait to see a real pain specialist at Stanford.

At one point, while in debate with him over the dosage of the Norco, my GP refused to refill my prescription at all. I thought that my argument was rather sound and logical. Every seven days, I refill my Norco prescription; it's ten pills that is prescribed for one per day for ten days. Obviously, I'm taking more than one a day (I prefer to take two, as this is about the amount to suppress the pain). My doctor knows that, and in not complaining or refusing to refill my prescription every seven days, he is indirectly condoning it. However, the pharmacy started asking questions as to why I'm refilling my prescription early (they will only allow it to be refilled three days early). I asked my mother if the pharmacy could refuse to fill it, and she said yes, if they suspect abuse. So, I called my GP, and asked if he could please write the prescription for one to two pills daily, this way I'm not refilling "early," and the pharmacy will be reassured. I told him I'm not going to take more pills per day, and that I'm not going to refill the prescription any earlier than I already do. He refused. So, we got into a fight, via leaving messages with each other. He told me to go see a Pain Management Specialist.

The Neurosurgeon I spoke to said that taking one to two Norco's per day (especially the fact that they are five's; I indirectly--I swear!--found a message board that was selling five's--illegally, and the people remarked that no one who likes opiates will even buy Norco #5 since they are so weak--I had to agree with that assessment).

The interesting conclusion I've reached after reading and listening to Dr. Allan Basbaum and Dr. Mackey is that the pain killers work in two ways. One, it lessens the physical sensation of pain. That part is obvious. However, also because the opioids work on the brain, it lessens the emotional suffering of the pain. Perhaps this is why even when my Norco doesn't lessen the pain, I feel better because the emotional consequence of this trial has been reduced. With this logic, I don't see any harm in "getting high" while taking opioids as long as you're not taking the opioids just to get high. Getting high, as stigmatized as it is (no chronic pain patient I've ever read has dealt with this subject directly since we're all supposed to pretend that we don't get high because getting high would mean we're all drug addicts), helps with dealing with the psychological impact of the pain. Chronic pain patients will say, over and over again, that their pain interferes with their life. Often it's impacting their emotional health as well as their physical fitness. Honestly, opioids numb the experience of being in physical and psychological pain.

About Beck [REVISED]

Just before I went to the hospital the last time, December of 2015, my mother and I got into a huge fight. She was convinced that I was neglecting Beck by not spending enough individual time with her. During the fight, Mom locked Beck up in the kennel outside of the house, and left her there. After we finished arguing, I let Beck loose from her trap, never knowing why Mom would punish her over my mistakes and carelessness.

I remember waking up most mornings at four am, getting out of bed by five thirty, watching the local news in my parent's bed with Dad sleeping next to me. By seven am, Beck was ready for a fresh, new day, and she would rest her chin on the bed with a ball in her mouth, nudging me strongly, sometimes whining or crying, and sometimes taking the ball and tossing it under a piece of furniture. And then crying more loudly.

At the time, in deep depression, I found the behavior highly annoying. Despite this, I still managed to take her for short walks most days in the field behind our house.

Mom yelled that if I wouldn't take care of my animal, then I should give her away. A part of me agreed with her. I didn't have much energy for anything, much less devoting that energy to my dog.

After spending almost three months away at Stanford Hospital and then a month in residential care at Morgan Hill, I came home and Beck regarded me cautiously, as if I had been gone longer than what was reasonable in her mind, and she was upset with me. The only dog to immediately greet me was Wilson, who jumped up on my leg, clawing me. Beck pretended she didn't care one way or another, and I personally avowed to spend my free time with her, from now on.

Tales

My mother told me recently that if I had been a boy, my father probably would have kept me.

Grambo is Dead, Part X

Mom refused to set up a service for Grandma. "If you really want one, talk to Uncle [name retracted] and do it."

"I don't want to talk to Uncle [name retracted]."

"Well, I'm not going to do it."

Grambo is Dead, Part IX

"Stop yelling," My mother tells me. We're both standing in the back yard.

I had just gotten news that Grandma's body, when found, was too decomposed to perform a full autopsy on. The cause of death was little more than a mere guess. It stated coronary artery heart disease. I'm sobbing at this point. "I can yell if I want to. You do all the time!"

Grambo is Dead, Part VIII

"She doesn't show it, but I've seen her break down, and it isn't pretty," Dad says referring to Mom. "It was her mother for God's sake."

Grambo is Dead, Part VII

"How do you know she didn't just say whatever would shut you up and make you go away?"

"Because we didn't have that kind of a relationship."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your relationship with her was different from everyone else's."

"It was!"

Questions on POLS Midterm

Literally, one of my multiple choice questions for my POLS midterm was, "What color was George Washington's white horse?"

I'm thinking to myself, is that a metaphorical "white" horse, a symbol of purity and goodness? But for my answer, I just filled in on the "white" option.

"Well, Whatever, Nevermind"

--Nirvana

I'm sure I don't have appropriate expectations for community college writers. What exactly is good writing at this level? In my Creative Writing class, I was appalled by how awful the writing was for our next assignment, a short story (three to seven pages). One student, during peer review, wrote a short story about a guy hooking up with a girl at a dorm after a party (original, right?), but the weird part is--is in the first paragraph, the narrator explains that his father is a serial killer. Way out of left field. The story might be interesting if the son was contemplating the possibility of being just as cruel and merciless as his father, if genetics passed down a certain temperament and tendency towards violence. Or while he was being raised, he recalled certain behaviors from his father that made one suspicious that this man was a real psycho. If he experienced the trauma of abuse, and was eternally changed for the worst. None of that was touched upon. I was asked to review her story, and yet, I had nothing to say. I wanted to tell her to ditch the entire project, write something else, and please, god, go to the writing center on campus. The student had no idea to include line breaks during dialogue, and she also didn't know how to italicize for internal dialogue. And was quite fond of run-on sentences, without it adding to any poetic element.

One of the male students in my class at least had an authentic voice (I told him so after class, and encouraged him to develop it), he wrote about Latino gangs in the Central Valley (he was raised just thirty miles from where I was). I'm assuming with his name, he is also Latino. He had great insights into these young men because he works at a juvenile hall. At least, that was a particularly interesting topic. I told him (after class) that most people had no idea about that world, they only understand what they saw in the media. However, his mechanics of writing are behind, I would say, others his age and education level. He too didn't realize you needed line breaks for dialogue, and made other common grammatical errors--all of that you can train into a person, but voice? I don't believe learning to explore one's voice comes from the dry instruction of professors. You either have it or you don't.

Of course, it's easy to criticize. The student poked holes into my story, which was far from being finished. It was meant to be a snap shot into the life of my grandmother during her final year. The students realized that there wasn't much for want, obstacle, action or resolution (they complained mostly that the story had no point). One student told me to reduce my description to a couple of paragraphs, an idea that I find would be said by someone who mostly read dime novels and/or trashy, empty works. Another student (the Latino man) told me that the description was great and necessary. The same girl, who told me to gut my story, also said that my foreshadowing was too abrupt.

"But it's foreshadowing," I explain.

"Yeah, just make it more mysterious."

I thought about all this after I walked around campus to drop off some books in my car, and pick up others, and I ran into the English instructor, who was surrounded by a group of students. I walked past him without making eye contact. At least his criticism is useful.