Decompression at the White Horse

Another closure -- this time from the other side of the classroom.

The last day of the travel writing class I teach for Gotham Writers Workshop was last night. We all went out for beers to the White Horse Tavern, the site of Dylan Thomas’s ignominious last drink; ours to be more nominious, and less final.

We had no graduation ceremony, but we raised our glasses to The Road and talked and told stories until almost midnight. The get-together was important to me. It served as a decompression chamber, bringing me from the depths of authority back to sea level, where the oxygen is free and people can communicate.

As I write this, with pen on paper, the L train is surfacing, like a long whale, into this sharp and sunny Tuesday morning. We pull into Wilson Avenue Station, and are “being held momentarily by the train’s dispatcher,” according to the recording. The four of us passengers in this car stare out the open doors at the station wall as the cold Wilson Avenue air saunters in and gets acquainted with the warm L-train air. Behind us, a graveyard sits; other victims perhaps, of the train’s dispatcher.

In regard to last night, I don’t mean to say that I stepped down from an exalted position. I was merely letting go of the pressure that I felt in my role as teacher. Some of the pressures are welcome: The pressure to be on time for class, to prepare well, to make our time together worthwhile, to make sure every one of my writers feels good about what he or she is doing. It’s the less useful pressures I’m working to let go of, or to avoid piling on in the first place: The pressure to be the expert that I’d like to be, the “expert” that I’m expected to be by some of my students, as their end-of-class evaluations sometimes reveal. Expertise. A tortuous goal, everyone knows, as there is always more to know, and everyone knows at least one thing about your field that you don’t.

The fear of being discovered as an imposter, as unqualified or under qualified haunts at least 98.7% of people in authority positions, be they presidents or playground monitors. (Source - the top of my head.)

(Euclid Avenue now. We’re moving again, and I’ve transferred to the A train.)

I want to avoid the pressure from the start. With my next class, I’m making plans to be more up front with my credentials, so I don’t feel the pressure to be someone I ain’t. But every time I go over my opening speech, I realize it’s not as big a deal as I’ve been imagining. This speech would dispel no illusions. I have in fact done a lot of travel writing. Besides, no one expects to have a full-time Travel + Leisure staff writer teaching their $400 Travel Writing course.

The pressure I want to shake is self-inflicted, and probably ego-driven. My students and clients are less accomplices than eager participants, following my lead. I have to catch myself as I reach for the oxygen tanks. I need to stay on the surface, where my people are. I have a class to teach and clients to coach and I can only do it well from sea level.