You MIGHT be an English teacher if...

Today, my friend Kim asked me to "help" her with a poem she was writing for a dance class (they're doing a dance to their own spoken word-- don't ask...) and it totally and completely made my day. I asked if she wanted to "workshop" it, or if she just wanted my comments. When she said she just wanted my comments "for now, and then we'll see if we need to workshop it later," I instantly thought about how my comments could possibly be detrimental if she wasn't planning on doing more than one more draft. So I asked her to do a writing excercise for me.

Seriously? I just asked my friend of five years to do a writing excercise??? Who am I, anyway?

Apparently, I'm an English teacher. And there are no two ways about it.

Now I have spent the last hour and a half obsessively checking my e-mail, hoping she has done the next step as I've outlined so that I can give her more constructive feedback and give her an opportunity to revise some more. It's this crazy rush that I get from helping someone who sincerely wants to improve their writing that affirms my desire to go down this career path. Thank goodness for small favors that remind me I'm on the right track in life.

Thanks, Kim, for making my day! :)