Welcome To Creative Writing - How I Found My Way To Creative Writing

Creative Writing – Journal assignment #1

The road to this class is one I, initially, had no intention of following. I had worked at Eastman Kodak for twenty two years and fully expected to continue there through retirement; fate had other plans. With a single phrase that has become permanently embedded into my memory, “Jim, you’ve been impacted,” I was laid off in 2005 and found myself too young to retire, but, I felt, too old to start over doing something else. I really didn’t want to start working again right away, and thankfully, I was fairly comfortable financially. Subsequently, I spent two years doing nothing from an employment perspective; I travelled, took care of my ailing Mother, and basically put thoughts of what occupation I would ultimately pursue on the back burner. Finally, after much thought and reflection, I decided that what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life was to teach at the elementary level. I had started at Kodak in 1983, after having graduated with an AAS degree in Accounting from MCC, so my college background was limited. Talking to a counselor at Roberts Wesleyan, the school I currently attend, I was disheartened to realize how few credits would ultimately transfer. Wanting to begin teaching before contemplating retirement, I decided to push myself to the limit and am taking as many classes as I can feasibly take each semester. I took six classes this past spring, and will be taking seven this coming fall. Despite that rigorous schedule, I still would not be able to meet my goal of completing classes and student teaching by the end of 2010. In order to meet that goal, I need to take several courses over this and the following summer. As my core concentration is Language Arts, the bulk of classes I need to take are writing and literature courses.
I took a writing course at MCC last summer (Advanced Composition,) and while I enjoyed the camaraderie with my classmates, I didn’t feel that physically being in the classroom added much value to the actual process of writing. When I decided on taking Creative Writing this summer, I had initially registered for an onsite class, but, after it was canceled, finally decided to try taking it as a “distance learning” class. It will be interesting to see how it goes. Nearly all of the writing courses I’ve taken at Roberts could easily, I believe, have been online courses. The bulk of what I did in those courses (the writing) was done solitarily. I will confess to being a little concerned about trying something new, but as I’m finding with many of the changes in my life over the past four years, you can teach a middle-aged dog new tricks.
So, that is how I found my way to this class. I suspect that the next several weeks will be challenging for me as I tend to enjoy writing non-fiction more than fiction. I have found through certain classes at Roberts that I enjoy poetry far more than I thought I would, so it will be interesting to see if that same enjoyment carries over to the creation of poetry.