I get up early in the morning and turn on a light. I get ready for work looking forward to more, to greater seeing. In this I have never been disappointed. My work is a privilege, the gift of greater knowing, of more light.

My students don't know how I feel about their work. There is no reason for them to know. They need me to do my job.

They don't know that I feel privileged. To the extent that they write and let me see what they write, they let me in. This is not a small matter. For all our social natures, we humans are isolated. We don't know each other very well. We live inside, where no one can see us.

Each piece of writing is a small illumination, an opening to the privacy of self. As a writing teacher, I see lots of light.

To students, I am a man doing his job. To me, I am a privileged man receiving glimpses of lives I could not otherwise know. The work isn't only work. It sustains the worker. To quote Gertrude Stein (I think I'm remembering this right) on her deathbed, "More light."