Autobiography of a Face

My advanced writing seminar is reading Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face, partially in preparation for writing a paper about their own beauty.  I should mention that this class is made up of 13 young women--what were the odds of that?  But it has meant that we have been able to explore subjects that would have been much more awkward, as the kids would say, had there been any young men in the class.

Their assignment for Wednesday (Step 1 of the beauty paper) is to write a letter to their future selves.  As I look out on the class--one student, with her particular tangle of brilliance and stubbornness,  headed for a prestigious women's college; another for UVM, where her dogged insistence on integrity and self-reliance will ensure that she won't get lost in the masses; and the 11 others--and wonder what their letters will bring.  And how will reading Grealy's memoir, especially given the new afterword by Ann Patchett, inform what they might say, if at all?

I plan on writing the letter, too.  My goal earlier this semester was to write more of the papers I assigned to them, but the realities of 3 preps this term and two writing-intensive classes (this seminar and Accelerated English I) have whittled down my ambitions.  This one, though, I will try to tackle--once I get my grades in (due tomorrow).