Offering something so small

Dear friends,

What a year! Grad school has been intense. Mills College has been intense. CTP has been intense.

As ready as I was to be a graduate student, I was not prepared.  Ready, because it is time.  Time to have a career renaissance. Time to model for my young daughter that lifelong learning is something we do in our family. Time to learn how to write what has always been inside me.

But not prepared because I did not make appropriate adjustments to my schedule and workload to accommodate all that is required to do this well. And not prepared because I did not know what to expect from workshop, craft, or literature classes.

This state of being ready but not prepared extends to my CTP workshop. I have been ready to design and build this workshop since the idea came to me while tutoring reading in the county jail some years ago. But even with the opportunity provided by CTP, I was not fully prepared to make it happen before the academic year ended.

Leslie and I came very close to running the workshop--we wrote an awesome syllabus and lesson plans and met some great people who are interested in seeing "Take Back Education" happen. And working with Leslie was so good for tempering me and for adding a critical perspective--I only wish she could be here longer to work with.

As I approach my second (but not last) year at Mills, I remain ready for this education and am finally prepared for it. I know now what I need in terms of time and what to expect from intensive graduate-level English courses (I was a geography major). I have some family business early this summer and then plan to turn my attention back to "Take Back Education" to see if I can make it happen before school starts again.