The Side Door Cracks Open:The First Day of Class

"The side door cracks open."

My first Intro to Fiction class at Susquehanna University started like the first line of Tom Bailey’s short story “Snow Dreams.” We were in a little room in the library on a Tuesday afternoon, me and 14 other writing majors all sitting around a large oak-veneered conference table. The room filled with excitement as we waited for our first writing class to start.

I’d been waiting for Dr. Bailey’s Intro to Fiction workshop since before I mailed my Common Application to Susquehanna University, since I left Susquehanna’s annual weeklong Writer’s Workshop for high school students two summers ago.

I attended the workshop the summer before my senior year of high school, and I loved it. It really gave me a feel for what it would be like to go to college, what it would be like to live at Susquehanna. I stayed on SU’s campus for a week, lived in a college dorm, ate college dining hall food, attended writing classes ("workshops") led by a college professor (Dr. Bailey), and spent the rest of the week making friends with other young writers and falling for Susquehanna’s beautiful campus. In fact, four other writers that I met that week also enrolled at Susquehanna. Three of them are in my Intro to Fiction class.

“The side door cracked open,” and Dr. Bailey entered the room and flashed us a grin. He wasted little time with the syllabus and started teaching.

“Fiction deepens feeling,” he began. Then to prove his point he read Isaac Babel’s short story “Crossing Into Poland” out loud, and everybody around the table was spellbound, transfixed, completely focused on listening to his energetic interpretation of the work.

That’s how Tom Bailey is. Whenever he starts speaking about writing his eyes light up. His passion for writing is big enough to fill a room and everybody in it.

I left Dr. Bailey’s class feeling like I could write eight novels and then walk over to Deg to grab some dinner. It’s a good feeling to have since Dr. Bailey has already assigned us a writing exercise (in the third person, write about yourself writing) along with two short stories and an essay on writing to read (John Updike’s “A&P,” Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain” and Francine Prose’s “What Makes a Short Story?”). Even so, I’m still looking forward to Thursday.