Of Power and Time

 In truth, the work itself is the adventure.

—Mary Oliver from her essay

“Of Power and Time”

Reading Mary Oliver’s essay today was perfect. In “Of Power and Time” she spoke of the three selves: the child, the ordinary person keeping time, and the creative who does better to ignore everything but their art. She made a good point about the ordinary part of life: you want a surgeon or an airline pilot to not do anything out of the ordinary. With an artist, that is a must.

I related so fully. My writing is my art, of course. But so is my career.

Take example yesterday — I’m doing my best to inspire my Global Prospective students to do something creative with their research presentations. Google Slides has become synonymous with presenting, but I’ve provided a choice board of ideas, including interviews, commercials, news shows, and art approaches. For years, these kinds of things were part and parcel of my classes, but since COVID and educational directions, much has changed.

The idea of the choice board is to combine the ordinary (specifics of their research) with a creative approach. It can be challenging, engage them in a creative endeavor, and ultimately delight us with the out-of-the-ordinary.

Will many take me up on it? I pretty much doubt it. For many of them, they don’t have that kind of transference because they haven’t had a chance to practice. For others, it will just be easier to plop stuff on a slide and call it done.

But…we’ll see. I have given them the power and the time to do something different. Perhaps a few will take me up on it. And the best thing that could happen is a few students watching will decide next time they will attempt the extraordinary.

And wouldn’t that be something?