Back to Junior High
The titular characters of Heathers. [source]
As I tend to do a few times a year, I am driving northbound to my hometown this evening to visit my family. On this particular sojourn, I am also speaking to the junior high smartypants English class about Being A Writer.
To say I hated junior high would be a gross understatement. The mean girls of my grade weren’t named Heather — I’m a hair too young for that. No, the mean girls in my grade came in flurries of Melissas and Jennifers and Amandas and Tiffanies. The comedy Mean Girls was based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabees — it might as well be a documentary. The intense loathing with which I reflect on that part of my life has such raw power as to blot out entire years. I probably remember more about what it felt like to be 7 than what it felt like to be 12. I consider this a profound blessing. I disliked high school less, but only degrees so. When I graduated, I hightailed it to college hardly daring to look back, lest I be transformed into a pillar of salt, a high school English teacher,* or some other form that might slow my escape.
I carried a fear of teenagers with me into college. Hiking across campus as an undergraduate, late to class or work or both, I was sidelined by a cluster of teenaged girls yelling after me. I was, momentarily, petrified, but when I turned to look at them, they said only that they liked my hair — of course they did, it was dyed a bright otherworldly pink. While I have spent the past two years volunteering at OutYouth, an Austin-based organization that provides services to GLBTQ youth ages 12 to 19, it took years for me to realize that, now that I am an adult, junior high and high school students are likely not going to be mean to me for no good reason out in public.
And, so, now that I am old enough not to feel skittish around anyone too young to drink, I am going back to junior high to talk about writing. I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child, and while I certainly have pursued other interests here and there, I’ve written continuously in some professional capacity since I was 18. I haven’t loved all the writing work I have done, and some of my own pieces make me wish I could scrape my name off of them like a price tag, but all of the work has helped me figure out what work suits me best and what it takes to cobble together the kind of clip file I can feel good about. That is probably some portion of what I will tell the class tomorrow. I will also tell them that being a decent interviewer requires being a decent person, and that no one is going to discover you, you have to hustle work for yourself.
The decent person thing, though, I think is the real rub. Or, at least it is for me.
*High school education is a great career for people with the correct constitution. I am not one of these people. I am disorganized, impatient, and curse like a sailor.