Once upon a time I didn’t know what to write on here and it reminded me of my first English class in college. The teacher told us we had to write something for her every week. It could be one sentence, or it could be 100 pages; she didn’t care, we just had to write. Every Wednesday night I would writhe around in my desk chair like a toddler, throwing a fit that I couldn’t think of something to write about, and every week I’d come up with some dumb essay.

Until one week. One week I’d had enough. I couldn’t do it anymore, and something in me snapped. I grabbed a pencil and paper, threw my keyboard aside, and wrote whatever popped in my head. At that point it was mainly about how mad I was I had to write these stupid papers every week for her when I didn’t even truly understand the assignment or what she wanted from me. The week before she held up another girl’s paper and said, “A whole reflection on what happens to our lost socks in the laundry! Brilliant!” I didn’t see anything brilliant about it and became more confused about what these “papers” were. I wrote one notebook paper - front and back - in almost illegible handwriting, and had just ripped the paper out of a binder, so the holes were all ripped out. I didn’t give a shit, and turned it in the next day.

A few days later my professor called me to her office. She held out the notebook paper to me, and just looked at me questioningly. “Yeah…I’m sorry, I just couldn’t anymore. It was too much.” “This was amazing! So raw - and the words you used…have you ever written poetry? This wasn’t really prose, but not quite poetry. Are you an English major? You really need to start taking more poetry classes.” I was, as the kids would say nowadays - shook. How on earth could the piece or trash I brain dumped on be so impressive to her when the essays I’d worked so hard on each week got no response?

I immediately added an English minor to my double major, and signed up for some poetry classes. They ended up being big duds. I’m not good when I’m limited to a form. But I didn’’t really know what my writing was either…still don’t. Ever since that conversation I felt like I had some special gift, but actually it’s been more of a curse. She made me think I had something in me, but it’s just disappointed me ever since because I’ve never been able to make the words do what I want them to do. Maybe that’s the problem though. I just need to let them be. Pencil to ripped paper. Thought made word.

Has anyone ever pointed out a “talent” in you that you didn’t realize you had? How’d it work out for you?