Are You a Student?
By Erika Liodice | June 22, 2019 |
A few months ago, my husband and I attended a tour of architecturally significant homes in Sarasota, Florida. Inside the residences, we were left to explore and discover their treasures for ourselves. The experience was heightened by the presence of local artisans at work. For people who love real estate and art, it was a gift inside a gift. Open the door to the mid-century modern home on Siesta Key and you would be greeted first by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a mangrove-lined creek followed by the hunger-inducing aroma of roasted tomatoes and garlic curated by a local Italian chef working quietly in the expansive gourmet kitchen. Step across the threshold of the new construction two-story downtown, and you would find homemade cookies and watercolor paintings among the straight lines and concrete.
My favorite was Higel House, the sprawling waterfront estate once owned by the town’s former mayor. Inside, a century of mystery and history were preserved within the home’s pecky cypress walls. Outside, the bay breeze stirred the leaves of ancient banyan trees. Tucked beneath their shade, plein air painters dabbed their brushes from palette to canvas.
I’ve always wanted to paint “en plein air,” but I don’t like the idea of people peeking over my shoulder at my work in progress the same way I peeked over the shoulders of these artists. Curious how they had come by this opportunity to paint in such an idyllic setting, I asked one of the artists if they were, by chance, a group of students. It seemed like a harmless question.
It wasn’t.
Her head jerked back and her nostrils flared. “I’m not a student.” She practically spat the word.
My cheeks flushed, rivaling the crimson on her palette. “So, you’re a master?” I blurted before I could stop myself.
She paused, paintbrush midair. Her eyes slid towards mine. “No. I’m not a master.”
The unspoken question hung between us. If you’re not a student and you’re not a master, then what are you?
“I’m a professional,” she said, landing on the word with the decisiveness and finality of a brush stroke.
That awkward conversation has stayed with me for months. While I hadn’t intended to insult her, I couldn’t understand why she’d been so injured in the first place. What’s so bad about being a student? Aren’t we all students at different stages of our creative journeys?
student (noun): any person who studies, investigates, or examines thoughtfully.
– Dictionary.com
While I too am a “professional” in that I get paid to write and speak about my work, I also identify as a student because I believe there is infinite room for me to learn and grow. In fact, one of the reasons I love writing is because it allows me to be an eternal student. An explorer of the world. An investigator of the obscure. A thoughtful examiner of things I don’t fully understand. Being a student not only helps me refine my craft, it reveals new dimensions within myself, which, in turn, fuels my creativity and eventually translates to stories on the page.
Being a student doesn’t mean you have to be enrolled in a formal program of study. To me, it means being open to learning in all its forms. It can be self-directed or achieved by simply experiencing the world around you.
In addition to the writing and publishing goals I set each year, I also create my own “curriculum of creativity.” While some of the learning experiences I seek are on the subject of writing and publishing, many support my creative vision indirectly—either by expanding my understanding of a subject I’m writing about or developing business and technical skills that make me a better publisher.
Over the years, I’ve tried numerous delivery formats. Here’s the mix I’m currently enjoying:
- Podcasts are hotter than ever, and it seems iTunes, Stitcher, and iHeartRADIO have shows on every topic imaginable.
- Audiobooks are finally enjoying their moment in the spotlight, and Audible is doing an incredible job producing high-quality original content.
- Online courses are accessible and affordable, thanks to providers like LinkedIn Learning and The Great Courses.
- Conferences tend to energize me. If you’ve never been to a Writer Unboxed UnConference, be sure to check out this year’s event, Escape to WUnderland.
Of course, the best learning comes from life itself. As I think back to my awkward conversation with the painter, I can see where the disconnect occurred. She mistook my question as a criticism of her talent, while I was simply curious how she had landed such a cool gig. It was a one-minute master class in psychology and communication. And though I won’t earn a degree for it, I walked away with an invaluable lesson: ask better questions.
What does being a student mean to you? What role does learning play in your creative journey?
The first time Erika Liodice saw the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower, and Holland’s tulip fields was on the postcards her father sent from his business trips. Those postcards inspired a deep desire to see the world long before she stepped foot out of her small hometown in Pennsylvania. Today, Erika is an accomplished world traveler and freelance travel writer for National Geographic. Through her new Places That Inspire column here at Writer Unboxed, she sends postcards to fellow writers about the places she’s discovered and the creativity they’ve inspired along the way. To learn more about Erika and her work, visit erikaliodice.com.
Good reflection. I’ve always thought of myself as an apprentice to the craft because I’m always learning. But I’m also mentor other writers. I’m both student and master and often the best learning happens while teaching. Too bad, the artist took offense where none was intended.
I agree, with Vijaya’s comment. COuldn’t have said it better!
‘Ask better questions.’
Of course.
Of a difficult scene, ask one of the characters, years later, “Do you remember how that happened?” I get the most interesting answers.
The current scene is hard, because I’ve never written this particular kind before, and there is a lot to choreograph for it to flow. But time is linear, and I can use that to list the things that happen, and then do a binary sort: is this item before or after each of the other items in the list?
Then I just write it in pretty words. Once the action is clear, the characters tell me how each item happens – because I know them. Very persnickety they are about me quoting them right.
Always be learning – and keep adding kinds of scenes to the toolbox. One of these days I may be able to just reach in and pull out the one I want, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Erika, for me, being a student means always being open to learning and implies a delightful humility. I saw a movie about the Dalai Lama years ago in which he referred to himself as ‘just a bug’. I took that to heart. No one ‘arrives’. Arriving is so final. End of the line. No more track. Which is crazy because we have so many resources available to us. I’m re-listening to a History of the English Language (Great Courses) in my car for like the fifth time and hearing so many things I didn’t hear before. Or maybe I’m hearing them from a different perspective. Thanks for a wonderful post.
I sympathize with the artist who was irritated by the assumption she was a student. I’m a short Asian female with a baby face and a day job as an administrator in higher education, and when I’m in professional contexts people often assume I’m a student or a work-study employee.
People might think that’s an innocent assumption, but they don’t realize how much the misconception affects their behavior towards me. New staff disregard my instructions in favor of those from colleagues twice my age with a fraction of my experience. Older women under my direction comment, “I worked for ten years in X department” when that’s irrelevant to the subject at hand. When I say I’m taking a vacation for my thirty-? birthday, they gasp, “I’d never have guessed you were that old!” And suddenly their whole demeanor towards me changes.
If that artist had experiences like mine, she was offended not because the notion of being a student is in and of itself offensive, but because when other people use the word “student,” it’s not with the benign intention of commending the person for being a lifelong learner. It’s to establish an age-based hierarchy and tell the person, “You’re not a real adult yet.”
Being labeled as a student wouldn’t bother me one bit. If I didn’t have to work for a living, I’d be a perpetual student. What a luxury it would be to study, read, go to class, file all that acquired knowledge and use it to write fiction.
To some degree, I am lucky because I write for a living so I’m always learning something new–sometimes about things that don’t interest me at all.
Any true artist makes a commitment to lifelong learning. This makes them a lifelong student of their art. But in some fields, students (especially grad students) are treated like gofers, apprentices or slave labor. So they may feel that ‘students’ don’t get the respect they deserve.
It’s so easy to be misunderstood, isn’t it? I can understand how she might resent the implication that she was a beginner at her craft. I’m always curious about the various connotations around words, their sounds and origins; hence my Twitter feed #poetswords.
Like you, I deliberately try to keep learning, yes, about our craft but also other things that interest me. I often assign myself research projects, such as reading all the books of an author in a row as well as their biography or memoir, or one year reading about polar explorers and another about early aviators.