Life's Little Disappointments

There are many wonderful quotes about plans that don’t work out. My favorite is "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley" by Robert Burns. (It was written in Scottish.) But I also like my mother’s bit of homespun wisdom: “Man plans; God laughs.” That about sums it up.

I’m waxing philosophical because, once again, due to forces way beyond my humble control, my class in “Writing, Publishing, & Promoting Your Nonfiction Book” has been cancelled, just days before it was scheduled to begin. Apparently, the community college has spent the last couple of days informing eager teachers that too few students registered to make the classes worthwhile.

On one hand, that’s probably good news because it’s hard to adequately prepare for a class with no confirmation that it’s going to be held. Thus, I wasn’t as ready as I would have been under different circumstances.

On the other hand, it’s bad news because I have to tell the wonderful speakers I had booked that I don’t need them. My lineup was the best ever and I’m really disappointed.

I guess it’s both good and bad news because, when I counted up the number of remaining copies of my book, which I planned to give to every student, my stock was running dangerously low. So now, I am several hundred dollars poorer but fifty books richer because I had to order more from the printer.

I could continue to go back and forth with why it’s good news—I’m swamped and this will free up time for my projects, or bad news—teaching is the highlight of each season and I will truly miss it. But why give myself a headache over the vicissitudes of life?

This is merely further proof that everything in life is interconnected. Something happens somewhere (the economy tanks, for example), and many months later, the community college has to cancel classes. People who might have wanted to take those classes are disappointed; speakers who had probably begun to prepare are told to stop; class plans already in the works are shelved; teachers who had new things to say turn their attention to other things; and the community college, which is certainly in need of money, loses out on anticipated revenue.

But it is what it is, a saying I hear frequently and have really come to dislike. Somehow, it just lacks the poetry of "the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.”

They just don’t write lines like that anymore.

To Teach or Not To Teach

My class at the community college used to be filled to overflowing. The maximum was 15 students, and there was usually a waiting list. The Economy (with a capital E) has changed all that. Belt tightening is no longer just a good idea; it’s a reality. Enrollment is down on all three campuses, but whether to teach or not to teach is completely up to me. Last semester, I decided not to.

Even though we had enough students for the college to break even financially, I reasoned that if anyone dropped out, and people always do, the group would be too small to be effective. The result was that I missed teaching, and the students I never met missed out on what could have been a great experience. This semester, the same choice has presented itself: teach or cancel the class.

This time, I am going to teach.

What is the worst thing that could happen? Well, the class could turn into the world’s smallest writing group. Actually, it couldn’t be any smaller than the time we started with six people, instantly dropped to four, and ended up with two. Those two showed up every week of a frigid winter semester, and one of them turned out to be a close friend.

It could be group made up of introverts in which no one talks. Of course, in all my years of teaching, that has never happened. While it’s true that more than one true introvert in a tiny group can put a lot of pressure on the others to carry the ball, how likely is a room full of people who don’t participate? Not very.

I guess I could go on with all the “worst things,” but that seems a pointless exercise. A better approach would be to wear my favorite sweatshirt on the first night of class and let the Fates take care of the rest.