Regis U.
Yesterday and last night I spoke at Regis University in Denver, CO. My friend Sally Spencer Thomas and her Active Minds chapter brought me to Regis on World Suicide Prevention Day. I spoke at noon to the faculty, at 2:30 I taught a writing class and at 8 PM I spoke to the community. It’s always cool to have different presentations to share with so many different people. I have to say it was cool having dinner with the Active Minds chapter. They do a lot of hard work there and they’re great devoted ladies!
It was also really cool getting to teach a writing class. On the walk over Sally and I were talking about what I was going to say and I thought it was all pretty standard stuff. Talk about the process of writing a book, what goes into it and what went into mine. Then Sally asked me what my writing exercise for the class would be and I kind of froze. Truth be told I never really believed in myself as a writer and kind of shrugged off the possibility of creating a “writing exercise.” So we got to the class and I stood in front to “teach.” I told the freshman writing class that at the end of the semester they will have completed as much education on writing as I have. I also stressed that there are two ways to learn, by reading about how to do things and by doing them. My book came out of doing.
As we were discussing the format of the book etc. I realized that this book is set up in a way we share a personal story to make a point rather than just share emotion. I realized that this is also the way I present and then it hit me. Wouldn’t that be a perfect writing exercise! So that’s what I asked the class to do. Write about an emotional time in their lives and the lesson they learned from it that is universal for everyone. To my surprise the class did it and some of the students shared what they wrote. The class ended with one male student saying, “I learned that everyone has gone through something and there are things we can learn from it.” Bingo! Thanks Sally and Regis!
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