Some believe that graduate school is just a way of postponing entrée into The Real World (and I don’t mean the MTV show), particularly if we’re talking about pursuing a liberal arts degree. Take creative writing—well, I’ll take creative writing because in 1996, I received an M.A. in English withanemphasisincreativewriting (you have to say it fast, like it’s no big deal). Some writers believe that graduate school is just for wannabes because “you can’t teach what is a divine gift” and that it’s something to avoid. For the rest of us writers who have nothing better to do and hope to not only gain the time to write but perhaps learn some marketable job skills along the way, grad school is a godsend.

I remember sitting in the office of the program’s director, Jack Hicks, before my first fall quarter had commenced. I asked him what I’d be able to do with my degree once I was done with my blessed reprieve from the YMCA child-care center where I’d found employment after college in the midst of a recession. He carefully answered that I’d work as a teaching assistant for professors my first year and then teach my own undergraduate classes my second year. With these skills, I might perchance find a teaching position at a junior college or land some creative think-tank job at Microsoft. Or, I thought, go back to child care. I was dubious, to say the least, but decided to believe him, even though the idea of putting me in charge of anyone older than 12 was a frightful thought.

TA-ing was all right—correcting some papers, leading a few small group discussions, holding office hours. It was almost like taking another class without worrying about a grade. And if students had problems that were too difficult for me to solve, I could defer to the professor, protected by his imaginary force field.

Inevitably, my second year of grad school rolled around, and I had to heed the clarion call (one of my students’ favorite phrases, although I was never sure why) of my fears. During the fall quarter, I had a mentor. Lisa was a Ph.D. student who had oodles of teaching experience. We taught “Expository Writing” together, and it was actually kind of fun, except when she put me on the spot the first day by asking me, in front of our students, to define oxymoron. (I know what an oxymoron is, but some warning would have been nice. I was a neophyte after all.) I turned red and burbled my way through an answer. But overall, teaching was fine. Lisa watched me lead a couple of sessions on my own, monitored the way I graded papers and gave me big-sisterly advice. I wished that we could teach together forever. Alas, it was not to be.

Winter quarter arrived, and I was given a Wednesday night class all alone. Certainly my students would rather be snug in their rooms watching Melrose Place than be slogging through the difference between “like” and “as.” I was terrified and tried to compensate by being strict. (Let me just say that I was 24 but looked 19 and had the self-esteem of a newborn marsupial.) They smelled my fear. A few watched me pityingly, others with distain. Attendance dropped. Those who remained took naps or did their nails. They didn’t exactly eat me alive—more like gnawed around the edges. One student—a sloppy writer who was angry because, after consulting with my adviser, I’d given him a D—flew a paper airplane as I lectured on semiotics, which I barely understood myself. I was so shocked that I kicked him out of class. More than ever, I was sure that this whole teaching thing was a serious mistake.

If anything, the winter trauma taught me that it didn’t matter if these “kids,” as I liked to call them, respected me or thought I was an idiot. Before, it had mattered very much to me, but because it had, both my students and I had been miserable. So I faced the spring quarter with a who-gives-a-hoot attitude. If they disliked me, fine. Instead of worrying about being Miss Jean Brodie or Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society (which the kids hadn’t even heard of), I would be myself. And you know what? That was the best quarter I ever had. OK, maybe it’s because I was teaching “Introduction to Fiction Writing,” an elective that most of them were taking for fun, instead of “Expository Writing.” They wanted to be in that classroom. They wanted to write. Or maybe it was because I allowed myself to be free. I joked as I led discussions, let myself be the cool teacher rather than the stick-up-her-bum teacher. On the last day of class, we had a party with fresh fruit, cookies and Brie. We read our favorite stories and mingled. I watched proudly as some students promised to start a writing group with each other.

But what skills did I take away when all was said and done? 1996 was certainly a better year to leave an institution of higher learning for The Real World than 1993. I got a job developing a summer camp program and overseeing a staff of five. I had learned to be in charge of others—leadership, I guess you’d call it. When I started to do readings of my novel, I realized that I could speak in front of a group on the fly without coming off as a yammering sociopath. But the most important thing I took away from my teaching experience was—no, not the concise definition of semiotics—but finally knowing that whatever I wound up doing after grad school, I would survive.