Belated Thanks

Earlier today, making my way back to my office after a particularly awful meeting, I overheard a student saying this: "I had a really crappy day yesterday, so last night I started making a list of all the things I had to thankful for. I wound up writing down all these things from the past that I wasn't thankful for at the time, but I am now." We parted ways at that point, but I've been thinking about this all day.

So, in no particular order: my list of Things I'm Now Thankful For, Even Though I Wasn't At The Time.

1. Working at McDonald's. Possibly the worst year and a half of my life, and I'll do just about anything to make sure my own kids never have to work fast food, but dealing with the lunch rush at McDonald's pretty much convinced me that I could handle anything. Plus, I saw first-hand what kind of job I'd have if I didn't finish college. There can be no better motivation.

2. Personal Finance class in high school. I wound up taking this class when a schedule change left me with very few options for a particular time slot in my last semester. I would never have taken it of my own volition, but I learned a lot that I still remember. And speaking of that last semester of high school. . .

3. Parents who made me take a full load of classes even when it wasn't required. My parents were an odd mishmash of practical and illogical. On the one hand, they actively encouraged me to forget about college and go to secretarial school instead; on the other hand, they insisted that I take a full load of high school classes rather than only the required four or five and working more hours at McDonald's. But Personal Finance was one of those classes I wound up taking just to fill up my schedule, as was Typing 3. And excellent typing skills turn out to be very handy when you're a professional writer.

4. Fishing and camping. My family rarely took actual vacations, but we went camping almost every weekend in the summer. My dad taught me to bait my own hook, cast my own line, reel in my own catch; he taught me the value of sitting still, not saying a word, appreciating what was all around us. The first time I saw the Milky Way was when I was fishing late at night with my dad. But usually, in the evening, my parents and brother and I would crowd around the little table in the camper and play Go Fish or Yahtzee. I can't remember my dad ever playing a game with us at home, but on a camping trip, anything was possible. And what I remember now isn't all the times he said no when we asked him to play with us; I remember the games we played together when we were camping.

5. Growing up in Idaho. The whole time I lived in Idaho, I couldn't wait to get out. I made big plans for going to college somewhere else--ultimately impossible, given the cost of private school or out-of-state tuition--because I was so thoroughly convinced that Life was happening elsewhere. In those days (pre-Internet, pre-Southwest Airlines, pre-Demi and Ashton in Sun Valley), Boise was a very isolated place and Idaho never showed up on the evening news. But living in a small town makes you use your imagination--also helpful to a novelist--and growing up in Idaho makes you unique in most venues. I always have something to talk about when I'm first getting to know people.

6. Non-traditional students in my undergrad creative writing classes. At the University of Idaho, most of my upper-division creative writing classes were scheduled during the evening. As a result, many of the people in my classes were older, non-traditional students who worked during the day. It didn't take long for me to learn that if I was going to be lazy and turn in cliche-ridden crap, they were going to highlight those moments of laziness and ask me to justify myself. At the time, I thought they were taking themselves way too seriously; in retrospect, I can see that they wanted me to take myself more seriously. And along those same lines . . .

7. The horrible Dr. D. He was one of my professors during my first semester of grad school, and he was nothing short of draconian. He told me I was vacuous. I locked myself in the women's room and cried after one of his in-class interrogations more than once. And then, after I'd produced what he considered a halfway decent paper, he helped me revise it and encouraged me to submit it to a literature conference. It was accepted, and I gave my first professional presentation with him sitting in the audience. I would never, ever treat a student the way he treated me--and now, having a Ph.D. myself, I look back and wonder why I thought that gave him the right to treat me so badly--but he did help me to convince myself that I could be successful in academia. And he did help me to understand that, while being tough on a student can be helpful in the long run, being unkind does nothing good for anyone.

It's interesting to think about how time changes these things--or, rather, how we change the way we think about them, given enough time to see how they fit into a big picture of our lives.