The final post in a series on what creative writing pedagogy has to offer vocational teaching in any discipline.
Teaching and advising creative writing students can mean dealing with frequent identity crises. “But how do I become a real writer?” my students often ask. “How do I get published?” they want to know, or, “How can I pay my rent while pursuing my art?” Instructors of other disciplines may be able to relate, with students doubting their abilities to become a skilled enough doctor, lawyer, or engineer. “Do I really have what it takes to go to med school?” they might ask, or, “How do I choose between my passions and a job that pays the bills?”
What eases my writing students’ minds is the same thing that eases the mind of any student working through vocational questions: the life stories of others. I might tell them, for instance, the story of my friend Katherine, a poet hired as a short-term consultant for an NIH study about creativity and the brain who ended up pursuing a PhD in neuroscience and now researches reading disorders. I might tell them the story of my friend and former student Hunter, an environmental science major who took a gap year after college to teach English in Thailand. Five years later, he’s still living in Thailand and publishing an English translation of a Thai novel. “Your vocational journey will have many unexpected twists and turns,” I tell them. “It’s impossible to foresee all of these now—you simply have to trust.” Oddly enough, it’s these stories about surprising new directions—rather than those about clear, certain plans—that give my students the most comfort. They seem calmer knowing that their paths will be unpredictable and, in some ways, out of their control. They like knowing that there are many, many ways to live a meaningful life, even if that life is different from their original “plan.”
It’s this power in the life story that leads me to offer life studies as a vocational framework to instructors of all disciplines. At Regis University, we require all our English majors to take a major author course, which offers a deep dive into the life and work of a single significant author like Emily Dickinson or William Shakespeare. The goal of these classes is to read the author’s biography alongside their full “oeuvre” and the critical responses to it. Such classes are common in English Studies—during my MFA in creative writing, for instance, I took a course focused entirely on Elizabeth Bishop, a 20th-century American poet known for her pristine, polished style. Much to my shock, this course revealed to me just how un-polished Bishop’s actual life was. Throughout her entire life, she struggled with physical and mental health challenges, including alcoholism and depression, and she suffered a string of personal tragedies that could have easily ended her career—but didn’t. I took inspiration from the fact that Bishop was a publicly closeted lesbian, just like I was, but used that as a source of strength in her work, not as a weakness.
By learning about Bishop’s life—and how that life related to her vocation as poet and profession as teacher—I was able to appreciate that all lives, including those of great artists, are full of meandering directions, happy accidents, and desperate tragedies. I was also able to observe the kinds of choices Bishop made over the course of her life: which paths she pursued and which she gave up on, which goals drove her toward innovation, and which failures taught her the biggest lessons. And this is why I think that life studies can enhance the vocational depth of any class in any department.
Not all disciplines can easily offer a full course on the life and work of one figure; however, any discipline can integrate life studies as a short lesson, activity, reading, or assignment. For instance, a biology instructor might assign Ammonite, a biopic film about the life of Mary Anning, a 19th-century amateur paleontologist who made incredible discoveries despite being shut out of the academy due to her gender. The instructor might use the film as a starting place for conversations about institutional barriers to scientific vocation, or about how hobbies can become callings or careers. An art instructor might screen a documentary about Alma Thomas, a painter whose artistic career began only after her retirement from teaching at age 69. Thomas was 81 when she became the first Black woman to have a solo exhibit at the Whitney Museum, and her biographical story might spark interesting discussions of vocation and time across a human life. And a mathematics professor might assign the biography of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician who developed revolutionary theorems and formulas without the help of any mathematical literature. Students might relate to Ramanujan’s struggles with racism and chronic illness or enjoy debating the importance or irrelevance of the academy in pursuing a vocation. No matter what their major, all students can benefit from studying the choices a psychologist, historian, politician, or business leader makes over the course of their life.
After all, every discipline has its heroes, and the stories of those heroes’ lives usually include conflict, challenge, random luck, and even accidents. It can be especially liberating for students to learn about the failures or setbacks of their field’s heroes—about how Gregor Mendel, the “father of genetics,” failed his high school teaching exams, or about how Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina in space, was rejected by NASA twice before entering its astronaut training program. Students might be invited to analyze the “failure narratives” constructed by individuals and the people who admire them. For instance, Ochoa has stated that after being rejected by NASA, she decided to strengthen her application by earning a private pilot’s license; ultimately, she believes, “What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background but motivation, perseverance, and desire—the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery.” As for Mendel, science journalists and historians claim that he “started genetics by getting it mostly wrong,” and that his failures “led to the discovery of a new science.” Stories like these offer a humbling, inspiring lens to students undoubtedly afraid of failing.
So what’s the takeaway here? Life studies—a focus of English Studies in general and creative writing in particular—offers a transformative framework through which students of any discipline can understand their own vocational journeys.
Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University. She is the author of six poetry collections, two video game history books, and four poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, POETRY Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. Her lyrics have been performed at Carnegie Hall and her poetry is permanently installed on a wall of the New York City Public Library’s East Harlem branch. She is a teacher of students aged 8 to 80, and received her MFA from George Mason University. For more posts by Alyse, click here.