I must admit: when initially looking at the titles of our readings this week, I was under the impression that their content would not mesh. It was not like the pairing was an issue to me; I had faith that there was a reason we were reading them now. It was just a small act of noticing. Perhaps I had this idea that the teaching of craft would stay focused on just that—craft—and that the idea of liberation and social justice in the classroom were separate issues. I cannot tell you why I thought that. In hindsight, I was wrong.

First, though, I would like to examine Murray’s idea of the writing process as “discovery through language”. For most of my life, I was under the impression that we should only write what we know. It was advice I had heard both online and in creative writing classrooms—how could you write about what you don’t know? Oddly enough, the time I learned to do the opposite lines up with the time I really began to learn how to write. In a class with my mentor, Edi Giunta (there will be no shortage of her appearances in my blog posts, I apologize in advance), I was told to write what I don’t know. It was an idea I struggled with at first. It feels shameful to have to admit you don’t know something. For a while, I resisted this advice, and came into class with the idea that I knew what I wanted to write about, and that I would not stray from it. I told myself that I had been wanting to tell that story for so long, and I would tell it, memoir best practices be damned. In reality, that piece of writing had already been turned over in my head over and over again. The narrative was set in stone, so to say. I now know I had to dip into the unknown to be able to come back and tell the story as faithfully as I could.

Even in non-academic writing, the process of discovery is irreplaceable. While reading, I was reminded that the course titles for English 101 and 102 at NJCU were not just titled something along the lines of “English Composition”, but rather “Critical Reading and Writing”—emphasis on the critical. I look back on those classrooms now and see Murray’s implications of teaching process all throughout them. I think about the ways I’ve encouraged my students to just write—to not worry about the assignment, to just get their thoughts on paper. The way I’ve been taught to let them grapple with not knowing. To not jump in and try to guide them a certain way. To, as Murray so eloquently puts it, just shut up. It is beautiful when it works.

However, I am cognizant that this ideal practice might not be realistic—at least, not yet, and maybe not for a long time. While reading bell hooks, I thought about the kinds of students and classmates I had. On one end, I think about my high school classmates. Many of my classmates, including myself, were the top achievers during our middle and elementary school years. Many of them came from families who could afford to put money into education and extracurriculars. If we committed ourselves to education, we were all but guaranteed placements in Ivy Leagues and prestigious internships. School was a chance at power. This, however, meant a suffocating school environment. Advanced placement was expected, not exceptional. If you were not staying after school for extra classes or resume-ready extracurriculars, you were falling behind. You did not, could not, think of school as a place where it was safe to discover.

On the other end of the spectrum are the peers I had in undergraduate. I think it is safe to say that college was also their chance at power, albeit of a different kind. If my high school classmates had the privilege of time to dedicate to their studies, in college, time was a resource often stretched too thin. I am cognizant of the fact that NJCU was seen as a “safety school” to many. Most of our students attended because it was cheap, or the school was nearby. Our demographic is very different from the kinds of people I knew in high school. I had many students who believed they had to conform to the traditional path: go to college, get a degree, get a high paying job. However, many of these students also faced additional outside pressures. They were the breadwinners of their family. They had siblings or parents to tend to. They were the first to attend college. Because of this, school was just something they had to do. Their focus was the degree at the end of it all. I had many conversations with students who wished they could take the time to sit down and do the kind of learning that would help them, but more often than not, schoolwork—and discovery through writing—was last on their list of priorities.

In class, we talked about new writing technologies—generative artificial intelligence. Generative AI allows learners to skip the process, the most liberating part of education, in favor of the product. What is so disappointing is that I can see students from both ends of the spectrum falling victim to this. When you have been told your entire life that you must go to school to better your social standing rather than to learn, it is easy to justify cutting out the parts of the journey that don’t seem to support that goal. The unfamiliar is scary. Why should I risk being vulnerable when I can just plug in a prompt into AI and go? It gives me my time back. It ensures I turn something in rather than nothing. It is safe.

In an ideal world, everyone has experienced the joy that I’ve been able to experience in the classroom. Everyone has the resources to go to school for the love of learning, rather than out of necessity. Everyone is free of pressure, free of fear of vulnerability. At the beginning of my reflection, I wrote about my initial confusion about the two articles. I now assume I must have known somewhere in my subconscious how they were connected: through the idea that the ability to deeply pursue the craft of writing is intrinsically tied to the state of the human being.