“how way leads on to way” (my semi-annual mid-semester crisis)

I think I’m a little too dreamy to have a midlife crisis, as in too optimistic and able to put my failures behind me, or maybe ignore them. I don’t think I have a lot of regrets about the decisions I’ve made, no matter how things have turned out. However, as the semester approaches the halfway point, I am having, yet again, a mid-semester crisis. Though classes are going well and my students are doing well, completing assignments as instructed and making strides in their writing, as evidenced by the improvements in their papers throughout the process, I still have the feeling, the one I get every semester, that I’m not doing enough, or that they’re not going to make the progress I want them to make, that they need to make, as writers.

At the beginning of the semester, though in some ways it’s my least favorite part, because I don’t know my students yet and am not as comfortable in the classroom with them, the potential for the semester seems almost unlimited. I know they’ve got a lot to learn but it feels like we have so much time ahead of us, so many assignments, discussions, revisions, et cetera, it’s all out there waiting for us.

I try to keep them busy and engaged over that first month as we get to know each other. Then, there always comes a day in the semester when I’m able to walk into the classroom with no feelings of nervousness, when I’m not looking at the faces of strangers anymore, but my students, my students, who I’ve come to know through both classroom experiences and their writing. This buoyant, easy feeling lasts a couple weeks and then, not coincidentally after I’ve begun to feel closer to them, after my feelings of responsibility are no longer to just “my students” but instead to Austin, Courtney, Madisen, Ethan, Jalen, Thea, and so on, I begin to feel anxious, like I’m not doing enough.

Part of the problem is I only get to work with them for one semester, which is not enough time. And so this last week or so, I’ve found myself, with half of the semester over, wondering what I could have differently. Was there a better way to get to this point in the semester? Is there a better plan going forward than the one I have mapped out? Of course, I know the answer is yes because no class is perfect, no teacher is perfect, and I’ve acknowledged this and forgiven myself for that countless times already. But still, here, mid-semester, with the inevitable end not yet in sight, but definitely coming, I begin to wonder what if, what if, what if…..

For example, this semester I decided to not have my students read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” an essay I’ve assigned most times I’ve taught a first-year writing class. I love having my students read this essay because it’s challenging (but not overwhelmingly so) and because it motivates them to be more self-reliant and think for themselves, which is important for their future successes and maybe even their happiness in life. The writing I’ve had them do in response to reading “Self-Reliance” is valuable and helps them develop skills in summing up complicated ideas and responding with their own. I know they feel a sense of accomplishment writing a paper in response to an essay that sometimes at first glance comes across as incomprehensible. I had one student at the end of last semester say to me with a real sense of pride, “I’ve got to be honest with you, this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” I assume he was referring only to school-related activities. 

This in itself was not a bad thing, but he couldn’t really pause to enjoy this accomplishment as much as either of us would have liked because he was scrambling to get other things done, especially revising his research paper, which was the biggest contributor to the semester grade. Other students were in the same position–wishing they had a little more time to revise their research paper, whether it be finding another source, adding another examples, or just clarifying some ideas. So I’ve revised my calendar this semester to not include “Self-Reliance” and get them started working on their research papers sooner. And maybe this is a great idea. I don’t know yet, I don’t know, and of course it’s the unknown that leads to anxiety.

I don’t suppose there’s any way to avoid this, outside of not caring. No matter what I do and how dedicated I am to making it work, I’ll be wondering if there was a better way. It’s like the experience of the speaker in the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” which I’ll include here if you need a refresher:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.

I think many readers (at least students I’ve had over the years) misunderstand this poem as a celebration of nonconformity, of taking the less-traveled path, along the lines of “Self-Reliance” or, Thoreau’s famous quote, in which he says if one “does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” I like that sentiment too, but that’s not the point Frost’s poem makes, his is more akin to mine, or maybe mine to his, it’s about the regret of having had to make a choice, to go one way or the other, less-traveled by or not, the speaker wishes (as we all do to some extent) to have been able to go down both paths, at the same time, to see where each led, that’s the way to avoid regret but it’s not possible. In some ways it’s a mid-life crisis poem–but one people at many stages in life can relate to. And even if people don’t feel regret, they wonder, what might have been? That’s what I’m doing now. That’s what I seem to do in the middle of every semester—wonder how it would be different if I had done things differently. Would it be better? Or worse? I don’t know. I don’t know and that’s the source of my mid-semester crisis.

Of course, the good thing about a mid-semester crisis is that it can’t last long because soon mid-semester will be over and I will be too busy and too focused on what’s to come to think about it. The end will be closer each week and my students and I will need to focus on getting things done.

I also help myself with this mid-semester malaise by telling myself that when my students leave my class and go to other classes and other writing experiences, they will have learned that finding the right words, clearly communicating to a reader, and using writing to better understand their own thoughts and feelings can be meaningful. They’ll know this to some extent and understand that the effort they put into writing will pay off—somehow and some way. And I tell myself that no matter what else has happened in the imperfect semester, I’ve helped them develop a process that works. That may be the most important thing I can teach them in a first-year writing class:  that writing matters, how to proceed, and how to keep getting better.

All right, I think I feel better now. Thanks for reading!

If you to read more, check out my other blog posts or my new book Teaching The Way:  Using the Principles of The Art of War to Teach Composition:  https://amzn.to/3mwbz3y