It's Not Brain Surgery

I try to get out of the Writing Center at least a couple times a day and take a walk around the outside of Desert Vista's two-building campus. These walks remind me that I do not live in a windowless box*, that the sun shines and there are mountains and breezes--all of which are good things to be reminded of from time to time.

Last week, I passed Evelyn Martinez, one of our counselors here at DV, and we shared a quick conversation about helping people, persevering in helping people, and remembering that we cannot do it all for them.

Evelyn is a generally upbeat and encouraging person. She told me that she'd had a tough beginning of the semester, but was reminding herself that what we do is not brain surgery and that the power belongs in the choices people ultimately make, not solely in our advice. With that, she went her way and I went mine.

I've been reminding myself over the past couple weeks that what I do here in the Writing Lab is not brain surgery. It helps me keep work simple and to remember that I can't teach someone everything there is to know or think about writing in twenty minutes or three hours or even a few weeks or an entire semester. I can't go in an connect wires or smooth out wrinkles to fix thought processes in a short amount of time. I can suggest and model and guide, but the choice belongs in the writer.

But then, this morning, I was thinking about what I do kind of is brain surgery. I'm not a surgeon in the sense that I use my knowledge and skills to fix problems, but I do root around in writers' brains, challenging them to use the mass of cells they carry around in their skulls as more than an instrument of instinct. So often writers present me with their problems or questions, I turn it back to them in some form or another as an opportunity for them to ponder and explore, and they crumple into their own lack of knowledge, waving I Don't Know like a white flag, pleading for terms of surrender.

I suppose what I do is brain personal training. Not surgery to repair, but challenge to build up--both the ability of a person's brain and the belief a person has in the ability of their brain. Student writers say, "I have no idea," and then I push them further and their idea pops out like a just-born foal, shaky but trying to stand and closer to walking than it may appear. It usually finds its feet (hooves, to be consistent with the metaphor) fairly quickly, and they have seen that I Don't Know is not a stop sign.

They have either been taught that I Don't Know=Stop Thinking (I always tell them, "I didn't ask what you know; I asked what you think") or they have never been taught that there is more to life than Not Knowing. I suppose, if we want to wax philosophical, we could say that much of life is not knowing and that we must learn to push forward through that or be crippled by the blank page that is tomorrow and the next day and the next day, etc. That is the More: keep on going.

I will remind myself that I am not a brain surgeon. I will remind myself that I am a brain trainer.

*Okay, technically I do have a window, but it does not give me a view to the outside world or let in natural light. Instead, it functions like those large panes of glass at zoos, the ones that allow us to look in on the lives of captive gorillas and polar bears. It is a glass wall that passersby occasionally choose to tap or pound on, which reinforces my zoo metaphor and my conclusion that, while it is made of glass, it is not a true window.