Barrett Dorko
22-04-2007, 03:39 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
The woman hovers above me while I sit at my computer during lunch. She’s been studiously writing down the name of every book on the table I fill before class. She grips the paper firmly in her left hand as if it was a bit of flotsam and she was in the middle of the ocean. I know what’s coming next.
As I speak without any real pause for hours at each workshop, jumping from one clinical issue to the next without any notes and the names of authors and dates firmly fixed in my head along with allusions to a hundred cultural references, I know that many students wonder how I got like this. “When do you sleep?” is a common question. A few, I suppose, wish they had this thing I’ve earned. A few, of course, are put off, and I can appreciate how my verbal gymnastics are at times both threatening and intimidating. I soften it as I’m able with humor, and when I employ a bit of the manual care I’ve come to use and teach I’m sure many are comforted to see that I am one of them; an experienced clinician.
The woman with the paper begins: “Of all these books here, which one would you suggest I read first? Which is the best to begin with?” I can feel my spine stiffen. I know that a simple answer containing the name of any book will end this conversation and that I can then go back to my reading, but I know as well that I’ve never chosen this easy path out because it would contain a lie, and learning is not something I tend to lie about – I save my lying for other issues.
If asked, I think any of us could recount several moments with a book or a patient or a colleague before us that had a profound impact on the direction our careers would take. I wrote once of a look Cliff Fowler, a legendary therapist in Canada, gave me when I asked him a question I should have known the answer to. It was at once withering and transformative. I can also remember countless passages from as many books that helped me see with a little more clarity the road ahead and thus made my next step a little more productive. But I never know when these things will show up and, try as I might, I can’t manipulate them to any significant degree.
In response to this woman’s question I spoke of how my own learning has at times been punctuated and advanced with certain passages from a number of books, but that the sequence in which this happened exactly is unknown to me and the next step is a total mystery. I said, “I simply don’t know that there is a “best” book to read first. Those I’ve provided contain many wonderful ideas, many of which I’m sure I missed. Pick one up, open it in the middle and see what it says. Connect that thought to another book and then go there. I have the feeling that most of us learn in this way, especially at this point in our lives.”
Boy, was she unhappy with that.
The woman hovers above me while I sit at my computer during lunch. She’s been studiously writing down the name of every book on the table I fill before class. She grips the paper firmly in her left hand as if it was a bit of flotsam and she was in the middle of the ocean. I know what’s coming next.
As I speak without any real pause for hours at each workshop, jumping from one clinical issue to the next without any notes and the names of authors and dates firmly fixed in my head along with allusions to a hundred cultural references, I know that many students wonder how I got like this. “When do you sleep?” is a common question. A few, I suppose, wish they had this thing I’ve earned. A few, of course, are put off, and I can appreciate how my verbal gymnastics are at times both threatening and intimidating. I soften it as I’m able with humor, and when I employ a bit of the manual care I’ve come to use and teach I’m sure many are comforted to see that I am one of them; an experienced clinician.
The woman with the paper begins: “Of all these books here, which one would you suggest I read first? Which is the best to begin with?” I can feel my spine stiffen. I know that a simple answer containing the name of any book will end this conversation and that I can then go back to my reading, but I know as well that I’ve never chosen this easy path out because it would contain a lie, and learning is not something I tend to lie about – I save my lying for other issues.
If asked, I think any of us could recount several moments with a book or a patient or a colleague before us that had a profound impact on the direction our careers would take. I wrote once of a look Cliff Fowler, a legendary therapist in Canada, gave me when I asked him a question I should have known the answer to. It was at once withering and transformative. I can also remember countless passages from as many books that helped me see with a little more clarity the road ahead and thus made my next step a little more productive. But I never know when these things will show up and, try as I might, I can’t manipulate them to any significant degree.
In response to this woman’s question I spoke of how my own learning has at times been punctuated and advanced with certain passages from a number of books, but that the sequence in which this happened exactly is unknown to me and the next step is a total mystery. I said, “I simply don’t know that there is a “best” book to read first. Those I’ve provided contain many wonderful ideas, many of which I’m sure I missed. Pick one up, open it in the middle and see what it says. Connect that thought to another book and then go there. I have the feeling that most of us learn in this way, especially at this point in our lives.”
Boy, was she unhappy with that.