Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she reflects upon the reality of Lamott's fears and joys.

As the title attests, Lamott's Operating Instructions:A Journal of My Son's First Year chronicles the first year in the life of Sam Lamott. The journal is filled with her son's accomplishments, her own responses to motherhood, and the other things that are going on in her life during this busy year. For most of her life, Lamott has chosen alternative paths, particularly in dropping out of college and deciding to support herself as a writer. Although before Sam's birth she sees herself as "much too self-centered, cynical, eccentric, and edgy to raise a baby," Operating Instructions proves these doubts to be unjustified. Lamott writes about her awareness of both her responsibility...