Houghton College

If you don't know now, then you haven't known. I'm currently stationed at the lovely little Houghton College in Northern New York state. And, to be brief, it's awesome here. The first night I was here, a bunch of girls from the floor, (who are all transfer juniors by the way), myself included, got together to watch Beauty and the Beast. It wound up setting us all up for becoming a group that goes everywhere together.
It's actually really reassuring. I still feel as though I don't know many people outside of my floor, but in actuality, I'm only a week in and know a good deal of people and am continually walking up to someone I don't know and being like, "Hi! My name's Susan! What's yours?"
And the classes? Phenomenal. Really, these are absolutely astoundingly wonderful classes. At the beginning of each of them, my professors will say, "Okay, before we dive into the lesson, let's just quickly give a word of prayer up to God for the next hour of learning".
Whoa!
I almost screamed, "What are you doing? You can't do that in a school"! And then I remembered where I was, and saw that everyone around me bowed their heads and began to pray along with the professor. It warmed my heart to see so many people - even if it was only twenty or so students - bowing their heads in prayer before class started.
And then my floormates and I went off to be part of the Sunday night worship service, called Koinonia. It's not required, it's not even strongly advised. It's just a community thing that everyone plans to do on Sunday nights. And to see the chapel packed with students worshipping God was...breathtaking.
The only thing that's making me freak out is my writing classes. And it's not because of the assignments. No, it's because in both of them, the professors constantly are asking for us to share our work, or pass it to another student and let them read it and see what they get out of it.
*Gulp*
Yesterday it happened in both my Literary Non-Fiction class and my Fiction class (my fiction class is short stories. I'm not so good with short stories). In Non-Fiction, I had to pass off a reaction paper to another girl and let her read it and, essentially, see what she got from it. Whether or not I was capable of portraying what I wanted or not. The whole time I was sitting there, dreading everything. All that was running through my mind was, "What if she hates it? What if she thinks I'm completely weird? Why do we have to do this? Can't it be anonymous? Can't we pass the papers all around the room multiple times so no one knows who Susan Markloff is and where she's sitting? Can't I leave? Can't I just not pass it off to someone?"
I don't know how she, or my professor, reacted to it. Mostly because she wasn't asked to read about what she thought of my paper. Every time his eyes drifted to her, I felt my heart beat faster in terror. I was, truly, terrified.
And then what's worse, but I had to then go two floors down and read something of fiction I'd written!
Please, my life is boring and I can use that as an excuse in Non-Fiction writing, but in fiction, I'm calling the shots! I can be a terrible writer and no one will care in non-fiction because I can blame in on poor life experiences. But in fiction, I can be a terrible writer and then everyone will know it!
So as I read it, to a small group of only two other people, my hands trembled and my throat became dry. My face got red, I'm sure, because I could feel it getting hotter the more I had to speak. I was waiting for my voice to crack, but thank God it was only two pages long.
I continued to sit there, hoping to anything that I could just black out and not have to sit through the class. But then, to my complete and total terror, my professor - as kind as she seems - told us to read aloud a small section of an exercise we were doing. Taking a deep breath, so as to appear calm, I read my sentence, purposefully cutting it down so maybe it would go unnoticed amongst the others that would follow it, or precede it.
After we were all done, we then were allowed to make comments, whether or not we found something to be interesting that another student wrote. To my surprise, my professor commented on mine, saying that it was a good way to illude to the story's premise.
She looked at me, waiting for me to answer, and I just nodded that she was correct - it was a time travel story. But I was surprised that, in such a short sentence, she chose to hang onto two little words at the tail end of it.
I suppose that this whole experience of sharing what I'm creating is God's way of making me feel more - or less - confident in what it is I wish to do. I hope to be able to come out of this more confident than before. We will see that outcome in the coming years. But I truly have been terrified the past two days, wishing to not have to show anyone what I write. I fear it's inadaquare, just as I am.
Who knows, maybe there's hope for me yet.