Confessions of a Student

At my last Hebrew class, the teacher Miriam asked everyone to comment on what they had learned. There were comments like:

“I can now keep up with what is going on in the Shabbat service.”
“I now understand the prayers we say each week.”
“I understand how Hebrew roots work.”

When it was my turn I said, “I learned that I can come to class, not do one bit of homework, and still not be mortified.” And it’s true. Since Reya told me about Miriam’s class last fall, I have gone every week and never opened the book in between classes. I’m sure the class would have been even more beneficial to me if I had studied, but it was interesting to see if this non-homework behavior would force me to either work or drop out of class, and it did not. Some nights I was really on. Other nights I was fairly quiet so as not to reveal how little I knew.

But despite my lack of work, I learned an incredible amount just from coming to class.

Yesterday as my friend Liz, who is a published writer and who teaches creative writing at The Writing Center in Bethesda, suggested that now that I am retired I could take one of her classes this summer, I had several reactions:

– I never took a class like this in college because I was convinced I couldn’t make an A in a writing class.
– I could not get by with not doing my homework. It would be just too obvious.
– What if I learned that I wasn’t at all creative? What if I couldn’t think of anything to write about?

I have been wanting to take a class of some sort, though. Pauline’s example would say that we’re never too old to explore our creativity. Perhaps I’ll sign up for Liz’s class, knowing that my GPA no longer matters.