Saturday, June 23, 2007

Does This Mean I'm a Hippie Now?

I am all written out. My first week at Lewis and Clark was a writing workshop that lasted all day. We did freewriting, we used prompts, we wrote poems, we played games, you name it and we tried it. We read aloud. And then we read aloud some more. I did not appreciate the poetry, and I grumbled through a mapping exercise, but I got over the idea of public speaking within the first few minutes. It would have been a miserable week otherwise.

I think the thing I really learned last week was how different a small private school is from a large state school. In fact, upon finding out that some of us had never attended an institution like this one, we got a roll of the eyes and wry, "you think this is strange, you just wait." Here is a list of things I found odd.

My morning teacher brought in cups and saucers from home and made us a hot tea bar.
She decorated the room with fresh flowers and dried lavender.
She brought in cherries and strawberries everyday from her own garden.
Both of my instructors kept the lights off and gave us excessive stretching breaks.
We were never told we were wrong.
We were often told we were "perfect"
My afternoon teacher gave us cookies everyday.
He asked us to write a run-on sentence one page long. My dream assignment.
He also played soft music while we wrote.
We were asked to perform a poem.
I learned what a Tofutti Cutie is and ate one.
We turned in circles to commemorate Summer Solstice.
My morning teacher gave us over half an hour to decorate our notebooks with fancy paper and glue.
People chose to sit on the floor at random times, including the teachers.
People sometimes climbed on tables and laid down to read their stuff aloud for no apparent reason.
Shoes seemed optional.
On the last day we sang songs in a big group.
No attendance grade.
No grade of any kind.

Please keep in mind that I have just begun graduate school and not kindergarten, though I could see if you got confused. Okay, actually it was pretty great, though I wrote some phenomenal crap. Maybe later this week I will pick some especially lame stuff out of my wallpaper clad notebook and share, since I am so good at that now.

1 comment:

ninjapoodles said...

Just save them. For the love of everything, save them all. Because 20 years from now, they will be HILARIOUS. And painful. Painfully hilarious. Especially now that everyone's doing "Cringe" and similar readings, I deeply regret not having any of my young-adult writing to revisit.