I had an anthropology teacher when I was an undergraduate at NYU who wrote a comment on the first paper I wrote for him (something on kinship in East Africa, I think it was) that, while he was giving me an A-, my paper felt “safe,” that I seemed “very careful not to make a mistake.” He said this not as a compliment, but more as a warning. His comment jarred me, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear from him, this flamboyant, exciting teacher, the teacher who made me decide to major in anthropology. I wanted him to praise my carefully constructed insights and analyses, but no, he was telling me to not worry so much about being careful, about being right. He was telling me to jump in and play around a bit with the material. A year or two later this same teacher nominated me for Phi Beta Kappa, and still later, became my PhD thesis advisor so I guess I loosened up a bit, took more chances, but still, he had my number. I think of this because even now, 50 plus years later, it still bothers me when I see a typo or an error in something I write, here in this blog, or in emails or text messages I send people. And I ask myself why I still listen to this imagined audience, this critic of my existence, why I don’t think I have a right to be messy, to make mistakes.
Oh yes....contemplating a different way of being. Still.
ReplyDeleteI love this professor!! I too had an anthropology professor who loved pulling our beliefs apart. Nice pulling of a thread from the past - whether innate or habitual, there are things about ourselves that can be moderated but not changed...and often they are both useful and limiting
ReplyDeleteAlso love this professor who wants to free his student from perfection, I also had a fabulous coach who freed the frozen writer. Relate still to that need for perfection though I know where it comes from...so many years past that and just when you think its gone...it's only lying dormant!
ReplyDelete