Life Lessons Learned at the Pottery Wheel

1. Patience. Rush, and the clay is sure to collapse.
2. Trust the process, even when you can't see immediate results. It's quite incredible how you keep thinking the clay isn't rising at all, and how you suddenly find that it did rise. You're never quite sure when or how. and if you are me, you often think that this one is just not happening, until it does.
3. Starting right is crucial: If you haven't got the clay properly centered when you begin, forget about completing the pot. As a beginner, I thought of centering as just an annoying little ritual before the real work of pottery began. Over time, I realized that proper centering is at least half the real work of pottery
   
4. Small mistakes have huge repercussions. Leave in one air bubble while kneading the clay, and your perfectly shaped pot will collapse, either while you are making it or (worse) in the kiln.
   
5. A second's carelessness can undo hours of work: So you have the perfect pot, 12 inches high, beautifully straight sides. And then you pull too fast just once. The top spins off center, your pot collapses. You have to focus throughout, or there's no way you'll complete it.
6. With practice, almost any mistake can be remedied: I don't know what to do when my pot has spun completely off center, but my teacher can pull it back together almost effortlessly. And today, I was able to do that a couple of times too (of course, the "almost" is key-- for instance, an air bubble is an air bubble is an air bubble).
7. You know more than you think you know. After more than a year away from the wheel, I was convinced I had forgotten how to use it. But the moment I sat down at it, my hands just knew what to do. The body has an amazing memory.
8. No matter what, you can always start over. So, make your mistakes and have your fun. When one pot is beyond repair, you can recycle that clay and begin another new one, with new hopes for how high it'll go, new confidence if how beautiful it'll be. You may be right, or you may be wrong, but what counts is that the process is fun.