You could probably call it a midlife crisis, but for more than the obvious reasons, I’d like to call it a late blooming. When I was in my 20s and so many of my compatriots were backpacking in the Himalayas or teaching in Japan, I’d already gotten married and settled contentedly into the pursuit of an intellectual life. I never left the safe haven of academe or my spouse, and I still love the niche I’ve carved out of life.
But now, without my consciously seeking it, danger and excitement have roared into my life, in the form of high-performance racetrack driving. And with my new hobby, I’ve gained some new perspectives on the teaching career that has defined me so far.
High-performance driving simply means driving like hell around an enclosed, twisty track, where the only limits to your speed are the physical limitations of friction, gravity, and your ability to harness the horsepower Detroit or Munich or Stuttgart gave you. First, you bring your car, which can be anything from a stock Mini Cooper (like mine) to a track-modified Porsche 911, and a helmet. Then, with the help of an instructor, who sits beside you in the passenger seat and doles out advice, you pretend that you are Michael Schumacher (or, in my case, Danica Patrick) at a Formula One racing event.
My husband has been pursuing this hobby for years and is, in fact, an instructor himself. He’d been saying for some time that I should give it a try, but it looked far too scary to me. Finally, though, I decided last year to see what he was up to. So when the opportunity arose to accompany him to historic Watkins Glen International raceway in upstate New York, I gamely signed up for a “driver’s ed” event, in which novices drive in untimed, noncompetitive sessions around the track.
First came a brief classroom stint, in which driving theory and basic safety rules and etiquette were covered. We learned how to pass and be passed. We learned the language of the “flaggers,” men and women stationed within eyeshot of one another on the track, who signal to drivers with colored flags when each session starts and ends, when there is debris on the track surface, or if there is a potential problem with your vehicle. We were told above all that we should do exactly what our instructors tell us to do, via in-helmet communicators (speaking directly is impossible over the noise of engines).
Despite all the safety measures at these events, the potential for disaster exists, given the fact that drivers are propelling themselves inside ton-and-a-half machines at more than 100 miles per hour. So I knew from the start that my life was in my instructor’s hands and that if I was going to come out of my first two-day event alive, I had better pay strict attention to everything he said. That was a switch. After more than a decade of teaching and parenting, I was used to being the person with the answers. Now I needed to turn off my authoritative persona and become the one who receives rather than gives information.
My first instructor was excellent. Despite the masculine atmosphere—there were only three or four other female drivers there, and none of the instructors were women—he treated me with respect and never belittled my fears (or my little, underpowered car). He tried to put me at ease, yet he also refused to pamper me or indulge my fears. Knowing that I was a novice, he gave me only as much information as I could handle at one time. At first he concentrated on the correct “line,” which is the most efficient way to get around a corner of the track. Then he worked on showing me when to brake, when to begin a turn, when to hit the accelerator. He left shifting for the second day.
No matter how competent a driver you are on the streets, the sheer amount of information that you need to process when you first drive on a racetrack is daunting. My instructor seemed to understand how much I could absorb during this initial experience, and once I reached a level of basic competence, he talked less and less, ultimately reducing our communication to waves of the hand, almost like a conductor with an orchestra.
Gradually, I learned to be both smooth and consistent through the turns. With smoothness and consistency comes greater speed, and as the event drew to a close, my accuracy and my speed improved so that I could begin to hold my own against the big boys in their BMW M3’s. There is nothing quite like going around a banked 180-degree turn at 70 or 80 miles per hour, or coaxing 110 out of your normally docile commuter vehicle on the straightaway. In just two short days, although I now knew how much I still had to learn, my instructor left me with an urge to pursue mastery of my new skill. I can only dream of inspiring my own students to the same extent.
My second round of instruction, at another event, was equally illuminating, but in a different way. The instructor was as affable and enthusiastic as my first, but he had a very different style, and that, too, taught me a great deal.
I told him at the outset that I wanted to learn as much as I could, and that he should talk me through every step of the way. He obliged, but since the communication device we used was malfunctioning, I couldn’t respond or ask questions; I could only listen. I was experienced enough by now to know that he was giving me great advice, yet as the sessions wore on, I seemed to be getting worse, not better, or so it felt. By the time the two days of the event were over, I was exhausted: I felt as if I had tried to quench my thirst by drinking from a fire hose. I had been given too much information, all at once, and I simply couldn’t absorb it all.
An important lesson for me, as both a student and teacher, was that I would have to communicate with my instructors about specific things I wanted to work on , and not passively wait for them to tell me what they thought I needed to know. Other lessons I’ve learned from racetrack driving are the need to recognize and empathize with students’ fear of the unknown; encourage without pushing; pace lessons; establish trust between teacher and student; and understand different learning styles. I also hope to push myself even further beyond my own comfort level.
“High performance” driving has changed me in profound ways. Aside from its sheer addictiveness (one man I chatted with said it made heroin addiction seem like a vague yen for something salty), it has made me view myself in an entirely new light. It is both scary and humbling to be a beginner again. I had forgotten how exciting it is to be a student, to find a new field of endeavor opening up its vast horizons before you. There is also something very liberating in submitting yourself to the superior knowledge of others. It has made me appreciate my own students more and impelled me to work harder on making classroom learning as interesting and exciting for them as possible. I may not be able to make architectural history quite as thrilling as racetrack driving—but I can try.
If I could impart only one lesson from my experience, it would be this: Do something that scares you. Try anything new, and, especially if you are the cerebral type, make it physical—downhill skiing, ballroom dancing, flying, capoeira or Zumba, tai chi or yoga. Anything that turns your expectations of yourself upside down and flip-flops the teacher into a student again is a salutary experience that will force you to reconsider how learning works. It is all too easy to be satisfied with being the authority, the expert in your field. Dare to rush in where your ignorance is total, and perhaps you will surprise yourself as much as I did.
