Inspiration is a tricky subject. It’s one I’ve been thinking about quite a bit here at the beginning of a new semester and prepping syllabi and teaching materials, a time when I’m also prepping for six or so weeks of solid diss writing to get a draft out by mid-February so that I can indeed defend this sucker on March 20 (last day to defend in the spring. Motivator? My diss director has already scheduled it and said “Now. You write.”) It’s something I think about with my dance students, especially, when I talk to them about what moves us to, well, move.  It’s something that, I suppose, moves me to pick up my camera and shoot when I don’t intend to in terms of photography. It’s something I wonder about in the classroom, especially when I think back to all those seminars I took as an undergraduate in a teacher education program. We had a lot of speakers who would come in and talk about being an inspiration to our students. I thought they were all full of shit then.

I think they’re all full of shit now.

Something I usually say to my students (of the English and dance variety): Inspiration has little, if anything, to do with the work we do on most days.

When inspiration pops into my head, I think about the thesis of Yeats’ Adam’s Curse: we have to work to make things beautiful. (I try not, however, to think of Yeats’ incessant pining over Maude Gonne. Could he get over her already?)

Occasionally, my writing students will tell me that they have to be “inspired” to write a paper on certain topics. I used to believe that this was / is an excuse to avoid the work of writing, the unavoidable mental and linguistic muck that comes along with trying to communicate one’s ideas to others (resulting in an end product that may or may not be “inspirational”). Applied to myself as a writer, I know it’s an excuse. “Lack of inspiration” translates to “I don’t feel like doing this today” in my world. I don’t think about inspiration when it comes to my writing. If I do, I find that I don’t write, which is, of course, entirely counterproductive. My only inspiration to finish my dissertation is to, well, finish my dissertation. That’s it. It’s not a lofty, idealistic goal. I just want my intellectual life back. I want to think about something other than my dissertation topic. And I want to think about something other than the fact that I “should” be writing my dissertation when I’m doing other things. But, really, this type of thinking is just necessary to maintain my sanity, the bit I have left, anyway. The floaty aura of inspiration has nothing to do with it. “Inspired” writing is writing fueled on unicorn power and fairy dust. I wish those things existed, but they just don’t.

I don’t link inspiration with teaching either. At least not directly. A teacher-friend of mine used to say that it wasn’t her job to be an inspiration to her students. Seems awful to see in print, but awful wasn’t the point: what she meant was that she would not be performing any classroom parlor tricks designed to disguise the hard and sometimes tedious work of learning for students– that kind of teaching that is, essentially, the instructional equivalent of feeding a baby strained peas by pretending the spoon is an airplane (‘zoom, zoom, open wide, the plane’s coming into the hanger!’). The job was not so much about what I like to call “movie-teacher” inspiration, but to be encouraging on most days, because in the real world, or at least the one I live in, that’s the best you can do and the best anyone can ask for. If inspiration follows, great. That would be awesome, actually. Encouragement could– should? — facilitate inspiration on some level. But inspiration was / is not the conscious goal. [On the other hand, I think pretending to be “Mr. or Ms. Tough-Unmovable Hard Ass” is even worse than “Happy-Joy-Inspiration teacher,” but teaching persona / performance is a subject for another post.]

I regard my role in the classroom similarly — it’s not my job to inspire — but I learned that lesson the hard way (from teaching high school English. Unless utter exhaustion could be considered inspiring, I highly doubt that I ever was). I’m likely, if ever, much more inspirational in my role as an encouraging teacher, rather performing like a circus-trained elephant.* Besides, I’m not terribly charismatic to begin with. Students can sniff out fake– and right quick. And rightly so. I think the teachers least likely to consciously consider what they do “inspirational,” least likely to try and perform “inspiration” in some way, are the ones that are the most, well, inspiring. And some have the natural charm and charisma to carry it in “non-cheesy” ways.

I learned a few years ago that the best thing to do was not to try and “be” anything in the classroom. Being yourself works just as well– for me, anyway. Of course, I’m funny and have a bit of a dead-pan humor. Not that helps or catches their attention any better. It’s more for me. When I first began teaching, I tried to be a lot of things for my students. I tried the hard-ass approach (and I can be quite scary. Ask ARC). But all that got me was a bunch of drop slips (good on occasion, I’ll admit) and a bunch of “crap, this woman is intimidating” on my teaching evaluations. I tried other approaches that were less intimidating. Still didn’t work. All any of this trying on masks crap did was make me feel disconnected from my students (yes, even more disconnected that is naturally and usually the case).

Nothing works, really. You may as well be yourself.

Over the past few years, I’ve just allowed myself to be myself in the classroom (without all the swear words, of course). Last semester was probably the best I’ve been able to do that. The reasons are murky. Not enough energy to care to pretend? Not necessarily. I still have to pretend I want to be there when I don’t (teaching is a job like any job in that respect), pretend “there’s no such thing as stupid questions” when I’m afraid that yes, Virginia, there are (usually questions that concern deadlines and other business-type stuff that I’ve either already gone over or have written down somewhere). But I think maybe it has something to do with being more comfortable in the classroom as I’ve gained more experience (over ten years now. Crazy.). It’s easier, more enjoyable to teach that way.

Judging from last semester’s evaluations, that seemed to do more to “inspire” students than usual. Maybe “motivate” is a better word for it. I really don’t know.

Maybe inspiration is the spark that motivates us to work. This is not rocket science and I suppose that’s something everyone knows. Inspiration is the thing or feeling or person that motivates us to move in some way. But, as my dissertation suggests, that feeling does not carry you through. It does not do the hard work for you. Maybe it makes the hard work easier for some people, but for me, it’s always hard work. Choreographing a dance number, planning a class lesson, writing a chapter (or a sub-headings in chapters– god, I suck at those). They’re all hard work, whether I’m inspired to do them or not.

I guess part of my reason for rambling on about this has to do with seeing a lot of the proverbial sayings, memes, what have you, that float around on the interwebs around the turn of the year. Be inspired this year, they all suggest in one way or another.

I say, “Work hard this year.” Inspiration has little, if anything, to do with it. And I probably need to say this most to myself.

*Incidentally, a student of mine once wrote on an official teaching evaluation that I was “on the ball like a circus-trained elephant.” I’m sure this student was not referring to my capability to inspire, though. I think this was supposed to be a compliment about my preparedness. I hope it was supposed to be a compliment about my preparedness. I hope this student didn’t mean that I looked like an elephant, at least. That would certainly not be complimentary.