All the Birds of This Day

I just got out of a two and a half hour class in a basement classroom. The teacher lectured the entire time and I vaguely grasped what was being said. I get B-'s on all my papers in the class and I'm having a hard time willing myself to be passionate about critical theory. At the end, I walked up the flights of stairs and into the day, and boy was it a beautiful day. I often wonder about education. I know it is important, I do enjoy it (most of the time), else wise I hope I would have dedicated the last decade to something else, but I can't help but ask myself, 'What are we doing?!'. I know that this is totally rebellious to feel this way about the academic institution in general (not specific to BYU), in which I teach nonetheless. I just spent three hours of my life feeling creativity and excitement for the faculties of the mind melting away and out the door to freedom. It's partly my fault, I know; I could try harder, be smarter, read more. But also, I want to learn with my body, let it run around and touch things, get into trouble, get stung. I think that is my main motivation for organizing a creative writing class this summer. I was never so good at conventional learning, even at a young age. I am finally okay with saying that I am horrible at standardized tests. I raise my hand in class thinking it's a good idea, and only realize much later that I was not saying something the way that anyone else had understood things to be. I feel so strongly that education has the power to influence people for good, to uplift communities and homes, to be the catalyst for change. I have experienced these things so many times because of inspiring, and challenging teachers. I just sometimes feel so frazzled after a class like the one I just went to. The activist in me tells me I must rebel, or at least do something. I don't claim to know too much, or even be a fantastic teacher, but I hope these classes come to fruition because I feel that together, some pretty incredible things can happen. I'm thinking more and more about an older class too? Would anyone for reals be interested?