Of course, portfolios will come in and the days leading up to Christmas will be filled with frantic grading.  But I’m enjoying the peace right now, and am reflecting on all of the good work I have read from my students this semester.

Back in August, the students entered the classroom for the first time unsure of what to expect.  Everyone knows what fiction and poetry is, but the idea of a “creative nonfiction” workshop is foreign to most of them.  Some of these students are in my class because someone recommended me to them.  Others are majors who need the course in order to move on to more advanced classes.  Others just need to get an arts elective out of the way.  Most, though, aren’t taking the class because they already have a deep and abiding love for the essay or literary journalism.

I hope that, over the course of the year, they have grown to love these forms.  Not just because I love these forms myself, but because I have seen this group of students come together and understand each other better as a result of sharing their own personal narratives.  These 18 and 19 year olds began the semester a little nervous, sometimes reluctant to allow themselves to be too exposed in their writing.  But at this point, I think that we have all become friends—or, if not friends, then very supportive colleagues.  We have shared family secrets, discussed our private anxieties, and revealed truths that we usually keep hidden when we’re in the dorms, at the bar, or in a department meeting.  We’ve established a sense of trust with each other, even though—or, perhaps, because?—we didn’t know each other 14 weeks ago.

Some of these students will go on to study English and creative writing.  Some will go on to publish their work.  Most will not.  But I hope that these students will look back on the experience of taking this class fondly, and I hope they feel like they learned useful things during our time together.  Of course, if they find that they’re able to express themselves through writing more effectively, that’s great.  But more importantly, I hope that, through reading and writing creative nonfiction, they’ve come to understand that they’re not alone in the universe.  I hope they realize that their friends, their classmates, and even their professors struggle with private stresses and anxieties.  I hope they have learned that, sometimes, we all feel isolated, or freakish, or terrified.  And I hope that they’re able to take this knowledge with them after they leave my classroom, better equipped to try to understand someone else’s point-of-view.  This, I think, is the most important reason to study creative nonfiction.

If I knew then what I know now, I imagine I might have gone into the conversation with more confidence.  Contrary to common misperceptions, English majors do not tend to spend their careers toiling away in coffee houses or bars, serving espresso or martinis to the former business majors who are actually using their more “practical” degrees to make money.  Some do, I suppose, but not the majority.  Most surveys that measure salary by college major indicate that English majors tend to make comfortable middle-class salaries—not as much as some, but considerably more than others.  Furthermore, English majors, on average, tend to report a high degree of job satisfaction.  This is important, I think.  I realize that I might have chosen a different career (or major) that might have resulted in more money in my checking account, but would I love that career as much as I love the one I have, teaching creative writing and literature?  And if not, would I love my life as much as I do?  I suspect the answer is no.

So, in hindsight, I’m glad I made the decisions I made.  Still, back then—sophomore year, 1995, I was a little nervous about what my dad would say.  It turns out I needn’t have worried.

My dad was responsible for hiring people in all sorts of capacities—reporters, editors, advertising sales representatives, circulation managers, press foremen, accountants… you name it.  He had been doing this for quite a long time, and he told me that as long as I was majoring in a discipline considered part of the traditional liberal arts, he was confident I was going to be fine.

“As an employer, I can teach an employee the job,” he said.  “What I can’t do is teach someone how to learn.”

That’s what we do, in the liberal arts—we learn how to learn.  We analyze texts.  We hone our communication skills.  We learn about cause and effect—whether it’s how the Treaty of Versailles ended the first World War but unintentionally laid the groundwork for World War II, or the role sunlight plays in a plant’s ability to survive, or how a myopic sense of materialism ultimately leads to Ivan Ilych’s death.  The liberal arts demand that the student think both carefully and deeply about any given subject, and these habits that become second-nature to the English or History major turn out to be the very skills that employers are looking for.

I’ve focused my argument supporting a liberal arts major (and an English major, specifically) on the utility of the degree on the job market, because I feel like in 2014, as students are still feeling the burden of the Great Recession, this is a huge concern.  But let’s be clear—the goal of an education isn’t just to land the perfect job (my high school U.S. History teacher once lamented to my class, “Why is it we never argue that education is worthwhile because it’s neat to know stuff?”).  My education in literature and creative writing has made me a more thoughtful, reflective person, which makes me a more responsible citizen (I’m not going to vote for a candidate whose public statements are entirely vapid or meaningless, like “Freedom isn’t free” or “We can do better” or “If [x] happens, the terrorists win”).  This education has compelled me to make sure I waste as little of my time on earth as possible (I defy you to study literature for a few years and not walk away with a knowledge of your own mortality and the ever-forward march of time).  Perhaps most importantly, I feel like my background in English has helped me become a better husband and friend.  Studying literature prevents solipsism—you can’t read “Sonny’s Blues” or “Diving into the Wreck” without considering the unique consciousness and point-of-view of another person.  I am convinced that this ability to see through someone else’s eyes, inhabit some else’s shoes, is a vital skill to have if you want to enjoy a happy life.  If I couldn’t understand where my wife is coming from in those rare moments when I do something to frustrate or anger her… well, I’d be divorced by now.

The most important thing is to make sure that you study a variety of subjects, and that you pick the subject that interests and excites you most for your major.  Some people speak of college and the “real world” as if they were entirely separate things—as if college students inhabit some strange parallel dimension where they are completely shielded from responsibility and repercussions from their decisions.  This is nonsense, and it’s harmful nonsense at that.  College is, in fact, the traditional student’s entry into the real world—the decisions one makes as a student will have ramifications for the rest of her life.  She may choose the road less travelled by, or she may choose the road that others have trod before her.  It’s the act of deciding that makes all the difference.

“Why do you like this essay?” I asked one student pointedly.

“Well,” he replied, “I could… relate to it.”

“Why?”

“Because… well… we all have grandmothers.”

This is true for most of us, I suppose, but I tried to encourage my class to reflect more deeply.  While it’s true we all have grandmothers, it’s not true that we’re all this particular 20-year-old woman writing the essay, with her particular relationship with this particular grandmother.  I had an eccentric grandmother myself, but my Nana’s eccentricity manifested itself in the casual use of racial slurs and sudden angry outbursts that no one could see coming, whereas the grandmother in the essay was inclined to hoard food and drive recklessly.

The notion that a successful piece of writing (or film, or probably any art form) should be something we can “relate” to is a little problematic for me.  I agree that I want to be able to find something that I can recognize and understand as “true” when I’m experiencing art, and for that reason I enjoy reading essays that explore the world as I have known it.  But my inability to personally relate to an author or experience described in a piece of nonfiction is not necessarily the author’s fault; nor is it a “flaw” in the writing itself.  I have never suffered through a migraine, but Joan Didion’s description of her own affliction in the essay “In Bed” is still powerful and vivid.  I don’t have the experience of being a southern African American in the middle of the twentieth century, but I can still feel empathetic when Maya Angelou describes the shame and anger she felt when the white politician insulted and degraded his audience when he spoke at her 8^th grade graduation in the chapter of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that is frequently anthologized as either “Graduation” or “Graduation in Stamps.” I’m not a lesbian, I’ve never seen an analyst, and I don’t really have much tension in my relationship with my mother, but Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? was still probably the most riveting works of nonfiction I read last year.

This is writing that I don’t relate to, but it still resonates with me, largely because these authors provide such vivid details, metaphors, scenes, and reflections.  I don’t personally know how it feels to be Didion, Angelou, or Bechdel, but because of the way they render their essays, I come to know a bit more about how they experience the world.  I walk in their shoes and see through their eyes, at least for a little bit.

That, I want my students to understand, is the power of nonfiction.  It makes another person’s experiences and perceptions vividly real to us—so real that, while we’re reading, they begin to feel like our own.  We fool ourselves—or allow ourselves to be fooled—into believing that this point of view is our own.  So this semester, and maybe from now on, I think I’m going to correct students who praise an essay for being “relatable”—and  ask them to think more carefully about how the choices an author makes can allow a total stranger’s personal experience to resonate so deeply within us.

[Photo Credit: Alison Bechdel, 2006. Photo by Loz Pycock, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.]