So classes have been out for about three weeks.
I still have several large papers in my possession with critiques I have yet to read. In fact, it usually takes about 2-3 days for me to actually flip an assignment to the back page where my all knowing and all powerful GVSU professors provide me with the valuable feedback designed to make me a better writer. I don't even want that paper back once I turn it in.
Oh, its not disinterest. No way. I'm neurotic. Didn't you know?
I get a slight anxiety attack on the day profs hand back my papers. Their comments are not reflections on my writing, my ideas, or my sentence structure. No, they're comments are on me as a person. If they didn't like my paper, then clearly they don't like me.
So I sit there, avoiding eye contact with my classmates. My talented classmates, who should all be writers and receive handsome salaries and rave reviews from Michiko Kakutani. Keith Rhodes and Charlie Lowe will throw a parade in their honor for their revolutionary views on Hunter S. Thompson, Dave Eggers, or Salmon Rushdie. Their papers will be passed on to the fishladder if not the Mid American Review.
So I slump down in my seat and busy myself with adding an unnecessary event to my planner until the prof calls my name.
"Why did I put that in my paper? What was I thinking with that quote? Does that exerpt even make sense? What did I title this paper? Oh no, that's so corny, why do I think I can be a writer? What am I doing here? This prof hates me. Okay, if I get a B- I'll be okay. Crap, I'm too stupid for this class."
(See? Neurotic.)
When he does place my paper, my piece of me, back into my hands, I jam it down into my backpack between my French book and the handful of napkins that have been in there since last semester. There is no way that my thoughts flow so clearly as those of my peers. I'll look at it later, I tell myself, thinking that I am no better than the non-writing majors in the class.
Keith Rhodes e-mailed our final portfolio grades to us. The only reason the e-mail has been opened is so that it stops showing up as a new message in my gmail. I have yet to read his comments. I don't know what Stan Krohmer thought of my reflections on Ishmael Beah, or why Barb Ziemann hated my paper on effective PR tactics. (Perhaps it is directly related to the fact that I don't know how to properly conclude a paper, or maybe because I used the terms "Strategies" and "Tactics" interchangeably throughout my whole 9 page paper.)
Being a writer is scary.
Being a delusional writer is even scarier.