Who are my teachers? Who are my fellow students?
Finding teachers (recognizing them, really) wasn’t too hard, but this Rule also mentions fellow students and that was a much harder find. Who exactly are my fellow students? Without being enrolled in a school or class, I’m kinda just on my own. My teachers are the successful authors and artists and thinkers whose books I can study, but who then are my study-buddies?
Perhaps the real answer is one I’ve been avoiding for over a decade now.
My fellow students are my fellow writers who are at or slightly above where I’m at right now in my craft and career.
The trouble is that I am resistant to joining writers’ groups. I always have been. I’m not sure why either, other than I’m not naturally a joiner and I am painfully shy and awkward when it comes to meeting people and making friends.
The other problem is that I’m not exactly sure where to look for fellow students who are at my same level. I can find beginning writers easily enough. But I’m not sure how helpful that would ultimately be for my own growth.
And I can identify writers who are further along than me, but they won’t want me in their groups for the same reason I’m resistant to joining a group of beginners: too much gap between their skills and mine.
Finding fellow students is probably a good project for me to undertake, but for now, for this week-to-week experiment in following Sr. Corita’s Rules, I’m fudging it a bit and defining fellow students as those writers and artists whose newsletters I subscribe to. They are also, in a lot of ways, my teachers. Teacher/student is a fluid designation, then. Those who can teach us are also themselves students.
I am both teacher and student too. In some ways, Rule 2 and Rule 3 are leading to the same destination: pulling everything out of everyone. Who the teacher is and who the student is may change and shift at times, but our “General Duties” remain the same.
But how to do that pulling? How does it work to “pull everything out” of one’s teachers, one’s fellow students?
What I did this week was read and listen and watch more deliberately. I took more notes on what I was reading. I spent time with pieces of advice and examples and words of wisdom from my various teachers, reflecting on these small lessons in my notebooks, mulling them over and trying to make connections. I spent more time copying quotes and ideas down, letting them sit for awhile before moving on to the next chapter or the next video.
Essentially, being more attentive and more thoughtful.
Also this week, I just started reading In Praise of Slowness, and I think its thesis fits with my idea that “pulling everything out” requires thoughtfulness and deliberate study. It requires a slowing of the pace so that ideas can sink in and take root. Carl Honore’s book is also proving to be one of my teachers at the moment, so I need to make sure I pull everything out of his book that I can.
I’ll admit that following Rule 2 this week was harder than last week’s Rule 1. Rule 2 requires a lot more slowness, more time for inquiry. It’s not just about being in a place but about relationship between people (even if those people are only coming to me through the pages of a book). Relationship, study, learning: these things take time. If things are too haphazard, the “pulling out” of everything turns into a half-hearted scurrying for crumbs.
I tried hard to do more than scrape up crumbs this week, but I’m not sure how successful I was. Got some good lessons and ideas from my teachers (namely, Derek Sivers, James Scott Bell, Ursula Le Guin, Mervyn Peake, and Rebecca Roanhorse). But reflecting back on the week, I don’t think I’ve quite achieved EVERYTHING.
Maybe the lesson is that this Rule requires persistence. Pulling everything out of one’s teachers and fellow students requires patience, diligence, and humility. It can’t be achieved in a week. Not even a semester or a year. We often only have limited time with our flesh and blood teachers and students, and so trying to pull everything out of them in the school term can feel like an impossible race against time.
But what if we continue to pull things out of our teachers even after the last bell has rung and summer vacation beckons? What if we hold onto their wisdom, their advice, and keep it rolling around our brains, peppering our journal entries with their ideas, mulling things over well past the semester’s end?
I often think back to things I learned in classes gone by, of wise words from my teachers, of projects and lessons done in a classroom or workshop. I continue to pull new things (and old things renewed) out of those experiences. The general duties continue even as the classes have ended. Even decades after.
Just as I am continuing to trust my place in the downstairs room, I have to continue to pull things out of my teachers, my students, and myself. Attentiveness and trust. Thoughtfulness and patience. Slowing down and sitting with things for awhile. Openness and humility.
Rule 2 is a general duty. It’s always there for us to follow. We must never stop the work of drawing forth the good and the true from one another. We are all us teacher/student. Not just for a week, but always.
