"Your older blog posts were better."
"You haven't been writing much."
"You should be writing."
Yeah, I know. Writer-artist Mary was traded away at the end of August 2010, when I bought textbooks at the UBC bookstore. "Here's my debit card and my creativity." Classes started. Analysis began. Critique. Literature review. Sure, the professors invited discussion and welcomed "I" in papers and encouraged that touchy-feely collaborative atmosphere. But all along, in the back of my mind, knowledge: I am not making anything I value. Mostly we critiqued what other people wrote.
Fear not, though. Grad school ends tomorrow--tomorrow I have my last class. It's in #10 at the bottom of this list.
Classes I've taken toward the M.Ed in Teaching English as a Second Language:
Theories of Second Language Acquisition
Theory and Research in Teaching English as a Second Language
Research in the Teaching of Literature
Advanced Creative Forms and Techniques of Non-Fiction
Culture and Politics in Second Language Education
Theory and Research in Teaching Second Language Writing
Advanced Workshop in Literary Translation
Multilingualism and Multimodality: Diversity as a Resource
Research Methodology in Education
Applied Linguistics for Teachers
The program has been valuable, absolutely. But I really do look forward to talking to non-school people, to reading literature, to personal projects, to writing, to making things I value.
And to being less serious!