Reflecting on the Grist… 

the inspiration and the process

This piece was inspired by my work as an adjunct at Windward Community College, where I had been a student in the late seventies, decades before.    

Writing it provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my life’s journey from high school to teaching, finding meaning in my experiences along the way.   

I have workshopped this with my writing friends, one suggesting I open it up into a novel.  But, whether I haven’t had the time, energy, or interest to develop it further, or whether I feel the piece is what it needs to be, simply a meditation on some of my life’s decisions and how I ended up teaching at a college that had provided me with a strong foundation in early adult life. 

It also became the foundation for a short screenplay, which was made into a short film by MFA degree-seeking students in a creative media program in Los Angeles.  The screenplay and film focus on a ghost terrorizing a professor working late at night and departs from the central focus of the memoir, reflection of a life’s journey.  

Although this is based on real events, names have been changed and some events have been conflated.