Back to School

On Thursday night, for the first time in more than ten years, I stepped into a college classroom.

Well, "rushed" into the classroom is more like it. I had spent 15 minutes driving around campus looking for a visitor parking lot, and then another 15 on foot trying to find the building, so by the time I actually arrived at the classroom, I was ten minutes late and just kind of fell into the room, heaving a sigh of relief. What can I say? I know how to make an entrance.

(Did I mention I had been wearing my work heels while walking all across campus? And that I was lugging my laptop the whole way? I definitely didn't need to worry about missing the gym. Thursday nights from now on will be giving me a perfectly adequate full-body workout.)

As I made my way towards the only available seat, which, naturally, was in the front of the room, I scanned the crowd. Lots of pretty girls. No boys. One older man, that looked to be around 50. Now, it's not like I took this to meet anyone of the opposite sex, but I won't lie and say I wouldn't appreciate a little bit of eye candy. What do you think was my motivation for going to class the first time around? Later, two more guys arrived, both single-looking, both seemingly around my age. It'll do.

Once I got settled and looked around, I felt very much at home. There were no less than six people in that room that I would swear, I have met before. I have racked my brain and really don't think I have met these people before (one is 23, one is around 43 - we don't really run in the same circles) but I immediately felt a kinship and knew I was in the right place.

That "familiar" feeling was reinforced when the instructors introduced themselves. The teachers are a married couple, around 65 years old, Jewish yentas from New York. The woman, particularly, struck a chord, when she mentioned that one of her first jobs was as a writer for General Hospital. I kind of died in my seat. Then she started telling us that she worked in advertising for a while, and I died a little bit more. I may have only worked in advertising for 15 months, but I studied it for a long time and find that it has provided a major foundation for the work I do now.

If I wasn't nearly dead already, she put the nail in the coffin when she explained that her recent work has focused on the spiritual. I won't go into her beliefs and fields of study here, but suffice to say that she, as a person, is very magnetic, almost ethereal, and I felt like I was in the room with someone very in tune, someone who could see through me if she tried. So, basically, I'm in love with her.

We went around the room and introduced ourselves, talked about why we were taking the class, what we hoped to get out of it. The class focuses on creative non-fiction; that is, true stories told in a creative way, be it a memoir, a biography, or anything, really, that isn't fiction. So a lot of people in the class have these major stories from their lives that they want to immortalize on paper. One woman, who was about my age, saw her husband murdered two years ago, as part of a white collar crime that she believes goes all the way up to the government. She's just now at a point where she is ready to start going through his things, and thinks the truth lies in the boxes in his home office. That's her story. Another woman has a distant relative who was part of the Spanish resistance and the French army and had something to do with the Holocaust. She is doing major investigatory work and interviews with people abroad and intends to write that story.

As for me? I really just wanted to find more exciting ways to write my stories from eighth grade or about that time my senile grandfather surprised us all at my graduation. Suddenly, those feel a little too trivial. Of course, I'm glad not to have a tragic tale to tell, and I'm one of many without a bigger plan in mind. But I do feel a greater pressure to churn out stellar writing, knowing that I lack a compelling story.

I will say this - at the very least, it is going to be an interesting semester.