ABSTRACT
The text I use in my freshman writing course is titled Dreams and Inward Journeys (Ford and Ford, 2012). The topics are listed under various sections: Memories, Dreams, Obsessions, Gender, The Double, Spirituality. As I write, we are about to begin our fourth week and I am reading their first set of essays, the assignment for which was to write either about an early memory or thoughts on gender. The early memory essays tended to focus on external drama: the day Mo died, the day I cracked my head open, the night I learned we were moving to London. But several students took the invitation to delve into the past with some currere insight. Sam, for instance, focused on his experience of high school as being “a prisoner of boredom.” The usual dread was interrupted one first day of school when he entered his art class late and instead of being docked points, his teacher asked him to pull up a chair so she could ask him what his favorite art book was and what kind of art inspired him. When Sam replied that he is fascinated by street art, his teacher told him she thought he had found his art form. Just so. That conversation started Sam on his journey to SCAD, where I now teach him.
