Head Case by Cole Cohen

Author:Cole Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627791908
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

September 2008

Valencia, California

As part of the program, I’m a teaching assistant for an introduction-to-writing course. Half of the MFA students are placed in charge of their own classrooms in support of a series of lectures given by a professor, the other half shadow different professors in their classrooms. Learning to teach is the main reason that I wanted to get my MFA, so I’m ecstatic and terrified to be one of the MFA students with my own classroom. All of my life, following the leader has been my biological imperative. In addition to navigating physical geography by playing a covert game of “follow the leader,” I have also always watched and taken cues from my teachers and professors. The women who were my college professors were my guides to how a woman can be smart and funny and curious about the world and be completely, unapologetically, herself. Now, for the first time in my life, I’m expected to lead. My introduction-to-writing students are surly from the start, though I don’t blame them for their lack of enthusiasm for five-paragraph essay structure.

Every Tuesday, the professor for this undergraduate course lectures on a different period of avant-garde art history, beginning with the futurists and ending with the conceptual artists of the late twentieth century. Every Wednesday, I meet with a cluster of students for ninety minutes to go over the lecture and to assign writing assignments concerning each art period. In addition to leading conversations and exercises in relation to the lecture sessions, I go over how to structure an essay, cite sources, and write a bibliography.

I make it up as I go along, artlessly lobbing different pedagogical tactics: joking, cajoling, threatening. I feel less like a teacher and more like a basketball coach in an uplifting sports movie, taking my ragtag team of colorful underdogs all the way to the pennant.

Some days, inevitably, are better than others. Some days I even get the sense that I know what I’m doing; those days feel like a homecoming. As overwhelmed as I am by the brain’s potential to unravel, I am more moved by its elasticity.

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