by Lucy S.
I think of this as a transcript-poem hybrid. While politicians and academic administrative bureaucrats debate ways to shorten lengths of paths to degrees for nontraditional students like me, the students continue to live out the twisting, turning realities that these experts ignore in their quests for carrot-and-stick prescriptions. I hope the form makes visible the long path a nontraditional student’s education can take, and some reasons why.
My language is plain and prose-like -- maybe too much so.
My continual second person voice addressed to my teachers is an attempt to say how deeply teachers can affect students as students learn in some ways 'toward' the best teachers. I hope it shows the gratitude and devotion we feel for those special ones who teach us so much while we plod onward.
There are zero of you.
You’re a hazy phrase to me. "A college teacher."
When do I ever even have a reason to string these words together?
I work in fast food, drive through photo booths, "babysitting," telemarketing…
First semester. There are four of you.
My son is two.
I am our sole support.
U.S. HISTORY 2 - Dr. Brax. You wear a formal jacket and tie, though you were once at People's Park in Berkeley. You're distant, even awkward, but not unkind. And I'm here to learn what you're here to teach. Your 8 am class wakes me up to my country's history. I tell anybody who will listen what I learn from you.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION - Professor Vaughn, our young adjunct professor with a janitorial business on the side. We give you (and your wife in absentia) a baby shower in class one day – Surprise!
INTRO TO SPEECH - Dr. [what was your name??] You tally our “ums," without counting them against us. I give a speech on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and a Vietnam vet in his late 30s politely excuses himself, and tells me afterward it'd hurt too much to hear it. Teresa, a 37-year-old student, and hippie back in the day, raising three kids alone after her husband died of cancer, tells me they used to travel the country selling their paintings – and she’s the first one to teach me about Nicaragua in her seven minute speech, delivered campfire style, with a lamp she puts in the center of a circle she invites us to form, sitting on the floor.
INTRO TO SOCIOLOGY - Dr. Wengart. Another transplanted Texan to our Mojave Desert town. You formally introduce me to feminism.
I’m working on a B.A. in Journalism!
No. English.
I want to be like you, my Comp teacher.
I want to be like all of you, teaching hungry, grateful people like me.
I love you all!!!!
Second semester. Six of you.
I’m an English major, Journalism minor.
I write for our college newspaper. (I interview professors who went to Vietnam and Nicaragua during semester breaks, and a woman who runs a domestic violence shelter. I slam our administration for not setting a more progressive example by recycling. I interview and photograph students for our campus questions.)
One textbook I read in the library because I can’t afford to buy it.
Sometimes I plan out a week or ten days of meals on the remaining $14 I have for food – two fish sticks for Justin, two for me, and baked potatoes, or cans of soup, or eggs and toast.
I have two paying jobs – one in the college writing center.
Essays I write by pen, or type on my friend’s borrowed typewriter.
You all accept my essays in whatever forms they come in.
Pregnancy – faintings – withdrawal.
A year off. I'm married now. Proposed to at the Grand Canyon, even.
First semester back. There are three of you.
My son is four. My babies are three months old.
My two closest friends or my gramma take care of my kids when I’m in classes.
Three’s the best I can do right now.
When my kids sleep, I read and write, early in the morning, late at night, or during afternoon naps.
All is well.
Second semester back. There are three of you again.
I’m still an English major and a Journalism minor, for one last semester,
A writer and copy editor one more time for the paper.
I learn that later this year I have to move and leave school.
My grandmother takes her first and last college class with me –
History of Music in America.
Mom and Dad's California family room for 2 months
Germany for 30 months
Mom and Dad's California family room for 5 months
Sacramento for 16 months
Anoka Minnesota for 6 months
Knoxville Tennessee for 28 months
Chaska Minnesota for 16 months
Mom and Dad's family room for 5 months
Aguanga California for 51 months (a lifetime record in one place)
My sister and brother-in-law's Midwest place for 2 months
Big City, Midwest for ??? (a new lifetime record)
Wait – when I lived in Aguanga there was one of you.
Class was a 90 minute drive from home.
My oldest, 15, took the geology and matching lab course with me.
Dr. Spear, you wrote the answers for lab on the chalkboard late in each class
To copy.
I asked could I instead keep the worksheet to hand in hours later at your evening lecture class
To work out the answers myself.
"No," you said. "You'll turn it in now or you'll take an F."
I asked, "Why?"
"Because this is an assignment for a college class," you replied.
"And that's the way things WORK. In the REAL world."
So I handed you the paper, and walked out with my son.
24 months later, there were three of you.
Classes were that same 90 minute drive from home.
U.S. History, the first half - a part-time professor who worked full-time during the day and taught at night. My 13 year old unofficially joined me and my 17 year old for that class, and got an unofficial A. From outside after an exam, I saw you through the windows, leaning over to comfort a sobbing young woman who’d failed the test.
Another music class – for my son. Billy Hawkins, you told us to call you. A longtime jazz musician. You handed out cash to students who correctly answered questions you called out! Sometimes you’d even beckon confused passersby in to offer them the same chance…
Psychology of Personal and Social Adjustment - I needed a lifetime in that topic.
Shortly into the semester, 9/11.
Our Big Midwest City. There are four of you.
33 months after moving into the house,
At a huge university, I take:
ENGLISH - Textual Analysis - Dr... You tell us what the study of literature is not, and it is NOT so many of the things that made me love it.
ENGLISH - American Literature 1 - Professor... almost done with your dissertation, finishing a PhD, no time to teach this class.
POLITICAL SCIENCE - a minor? - Dr... You’re the only professor I feel a connection to here. We study the Cuban Revolution.
TEACHING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE – another minor? – Dr... You teach like a businessman. "Pragmatic," you say you are.
I feel completely out of place. I had no idea it would be so different.
My kids are 8 to 21.
Another second semester. There are four of you.
Political Science - Dr...
Political Science - Dr...
Political Science - Dr...
Linguistics at the graduate level for a Teaching ESL minor – Dr…
I've given up on the English major – it’s not what I thought it was.
One of my 17 year olds goes to Political Science classes with me sometimes.
---------- Our T.A. dies near the end of the semester.
We your students find out he is your son,
A Teaching Assistant in his mother’s political science class on Democracy.
Summer, then Fall without classes.
Maybe I won't go back.
It hurts less to not go back.
I think I’m a better mother when I’m not in school,
My spouse seems to like me a little better when I’m not in school,
I don’t have to face those classrooms where there's no one like me when I’m not in school.
A third semester starting in January. There are four of you.
ENGLISH - Literacy and Diversity - you're one of my favorites - Dr...
TEACHING ESL - language acquisition and study abroad - for the minor - Dr... You know eleven languages and are always learning one. You've taught for four decades. You often talk with me after class about language acquisition as we walk out, down the steps, and across the street.
BRITISH LITERATURE, 1800s to sort of now - almost a Dr.... I nominate you for a department award because you teach us so well. And you’re a mom, like me! You have a 6 year old daughter. You get the award. And you finish your PhD this semester!
ENGLISH - History as Memoir - almost a Dr... (For once, there are students like me in there. I don’t stand out. I can relax.) I like that you debate with us.
Spring Break ------
On the first day, an anonymous email directs me to a link.
I’m confused. I don’t have My Space.
Back and forth posts – Oh –
My spouse... is involved with someone else.
Why am I shocked; why am I shaking?
I call one of my oldest friends, crying.
My friend says, "Well, at least it's not like you guys were so in love anyway. If it was me, I’d be devastated, but you didn’t have a good marriage anyway.”
I thought I did feel devastated. Is this some lesser emotion?
She doesn’t understand. I don’t understand, either.
I want out of this melodramatic cliché – I’m not a victim - if I would just stop crying – but what was the use of trying all those years – but what choice was there anyway – but “I feel like such a loser,” I tell my friend – “You’re not a loser; he’s the loser,” she says – and I hate something false in every part of this – I just want to not be in this set of events, and what difference does any of it make, anyway – and then I keep crying for some reason.
I tell my oldest son when he gets home, who tells me his brother (one of the twins) sent the email.
He'd seen the page, and kept the information to himself
Dysfunctional in his community college writing center job that week, breaking down.
"You can't tell her till spring break," said the oldest, "or she'll lose the semester. She has midterm exams and papers. You have to wait."
I want to say I’m sorry to them then, sorry everything isn’t different, but that too sounds like melodrama.
By the end of the week, there’s a sort of reconciliation.
And I go back to school,
But the reconciliation keeps crumbling,
As others have before.
------------------------------
You, from the previous spring, who lost her son, ask me to write a piece for a book to remember him, a book for a scholarship in his name.
I agree, of course. I’m so scared
That I won’t write what I want to for you and him.
Still I write it. You so graciously say it was just what you'd hoped for.
I go to an event to launch the scholarship and book
At the end of my semester.
Summer, fall, spring.
Summer, fall, spring.
Why go back? What difference does it make anyway?
24 months after the event to remember and honor your son's life,
You invite me to join you and others for one last gathering
Before newly graduated PhDs go off to start jobs.
One of them asks me about my education.
I stopped going, I say. I didn't know where it was even going anymore.
She says, sometimes you just have to do something as well as you possibly can and see who you'll become by living through that.
Maybe I will return.
Summer.
Another first semester. There are five of you.
SPANISH - Professor ... You’re overwhelmed, but nice.
ENGLISH - Shakespeare - Dr… You’ve taught for decades here. (My oldest son takes the class with me. We read the plays out loud together and laugh.)
ENGLISH – Postcolonial. You become a friend. I love your class.
ENGLISH - a Directed Study. You’re my connection to the first time at this university – my old Literacy and Diversity professor – still a favorite.
ENGLISH - another Directed Study – Dr… Within a month, you make me regain all the old faith I had in education and then some. You’re one of those special teachers who change people’s whole lives.
Another second semester. There are three of you.
Or sort of four, or even six.
SPANISH. You and I often talk after class about the anarchists.
ENGLISH - Honor's Thesis (with a number of you involved)
ENGLISH - Environmental Literature. I feel intimidated by you. But I meet one of my dear friends, thanks to you. You make us writing partners.
ENGLISH - American Literature 2. You, the special teacher, who taught one of my directed studies and teach my American Lit class now, and will work with me on my honor's thesis - you tell me I could go to graduate school, and you meet with me regularly to talk about literature and listen to my personal stories, and you treat me as a friend.
But near the end of the semester, you have news.
You're moving to take a job 1000 miles away.
Because you have no job security here. (Contingent faculty… and not to get too legalistic here, but our legislature tried to make the U give one year notices for not rehiring, so the U got around that by “firing” them every time they hired them for one more year – and these institutional details sure do play out in real people’s lives.)
And you're only my teacher - well, kind of my friend –
And I guess a kind of mentor and hero in my mind.
Reasonably or not, I feel heartbroken.
Summer. Writing. California.
My uncle has Parkinson’s (no - later they change it to ALS), his muscles collapsing so soon after diagnosis.
A third semester. There are three of you.
Or six or seven.
SPANISH. You’re a grad student with another year to go to PhD. And you do a good job with us.
ENGLISH - Creative Writing Nonfiction Graduate Level. I think you think I'm stupid and dislike me, but I would not have missed this class. I write some of my stories.
HORTICULTURE with a Lab - another science requirement after all. You, the class teacher, and you the lab teacher – you’re both nice men with lots of enthusiasm for your topic, but this has no applicability in my life after all – no organic gardening methods here, and I gave up my minor in Teaching ESL to get this requirement meant – but sometimes we have fun in the lab.
ENGLISH - Honor's Thesis (three of you - one from 1000 miles away). I write over 70 pages for you all – well, more for you, my political science professor whose son was our T.A., and most of all for you, my Directed Study, American Lit professor who takes my efforts so seriously, and who makes me feel that we’re part of something heroic.
I graduate –
B.A. in English, minor in Political Science, summa cum laude.
Spring semester. I'm not in school. But there is one of you.
I keep asking for your feedback on my 70 plus page honors thesis.
You send me a 9 page response from 1000 miles away
And I keep reading it.
I apply to a master's program knowing I can't go without a fellowship.
So I try to plan what I will really do.
Three of you write recommendation letters for my application.
I get the fellowship. I get the fellowship.
I will go to graduate school.
I take my two younger kids to stay with my uncle and aunt in California for two weeks because my uncle is dying – my great friend, my sort of other dad.
I email you from there, trying to not succumb to despair
Seeing my uncle being killed by ALS.
You send me an email of understanding and hope.
My sons graduate with B.A.s at the end of the semester.
Summer.
I don’t know how to be at home.
My spouse and I have lived separated in the same house for years now.
But he waits and waits for me to finish my education. He wants me to have my chance.
I take cross-country driving trips with my kids.
I don’t know where I belong anymore.
A first semester at a new university. There are three of you.
And there is always one of you, also - my friend.
I drown you in email, as I've done for so long, because you’re so far away.
I’m trying to understand who I am now.
My uncle is dying. I call him on drives home at night.
I tell you I can't keep up with the work of graduate school.
I say something good is going away and it's never coming back.
Everything is bleak.
I hate reading so much theory,
Reading all these efforts people made to make sense of human life,
Crammed into my mind like that, seeming so futile.
My uncle dies the day after Thanksgiving.
I fly to California and stay for over a week, waiting for the funeral.
I come back to winter and three long papers to write.
I don’t know how I can do it.
I cry through so many days, trying to write from morning till night.
You're drowning in work,
But you take my emails and respond when you can.
When I fall into despair again and again,
You say you thought I was doing so well. What happened?
Others of you give me extensions –
You all tell me to keep writing
And I make it.
You send me an email telling me how proud you are of me.
And you tell me what you said in your recommendation letter.
And I cry and laugh and smile.
Another second semester, and there are three of you.
And always one more from afar.
I grow brighter as the semester moves us toward spring.
One of you saves my grad student life with your lighter work load –
From you, I learn so many lessons about creating a restorative class.
One of you reminds me of a gentleman scholar, emphasis on the gentle, gathering us together for studies in the English Renaissance.
And one of you teaches transnational literature and theory. Like all great teachers, you make me feel that our work together is a cause.
I am one of you, this semester - just a little. Not really.
I’m an upaid community ed. English as a Second Language teacher.
Summer. I go to California
And Idaho to see my parents who have retired there.
Another third semester; three of you again.
You who taught my brittle shaky self Native American Literature my first semester – you teach 19th Century American Women’s Rhetoric. I tell you, “I think I need this class!” I’m stronger this time around. And I realize how strong and open and caring you are.
You – a new you – have agreed to an independent study of working-class literature with me – and we meet almost every week for a good two hours -- how generous you are.
And you who taught transnational texts – I take your class on Occupy and writing resistance, and again – our work is a cause. I ask you to advise my final project next semester.
And one from afar. Well, you’re my friend; but these verbal distinctions sometimes fall short of the realities they must stretch themselves around. Teacher... friend... where does one leave off and the other begin?
Last semester. There are three of you for my committee.
One, my advisor, also teaches a class you allow me to be part of as a guest.
And one far away.
I write my master's project
On ascending through education,
And all the complicated threads running through these ‘upward’ stories – the inequalities they reveal as they supposedly testify to access and mobility – and I don’t want to do this cynically, because I know how much it still means.
I graduate with an M.A. in English.
Summer. I apply for a job to teach a class in the fall at the university I’ve graduated from. My working-class literature independent study professor who was on my committee who I consider my friend – he hires me. He gives me a chance to teach. It is a gift I’ll never forget.
First semester, there is one of me.
And one of you far away,
And others of you nearby and not so near.
I love you all.
Maybe I am one of you now.
My language is plain and prose-like -- maybe too much so.
My continual second person voice addressed to my teachers is an attempt to say how deeply teachers can affect students as students learn in some ways 'toward' the best teachers. I hope it shows the gratitude and devotion we feel for those special ones who teach us so much while we plod onward.
There are zero of you.
You’re a hazy phrase to me. "A college teacher."
When do I ever even have a reason to string these words together?
I work in fast food, drive through photo booths, "babysitting," telemarketing…
First semester. There are four of you.
My son is two.
I am our sole support.
U.S. HISTORY 2 - Dr. Brax. You wear a formal jacket and tie, though you were once at People's Park in Berkeley. You're distant, even awkward, but not unkind. And I'm here to learn what you're here to teach. Your 8 am class wakes me up to my country's history. I tell anybody who will listen what I learn from you.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION - Professor Vaughn, our young adjunct professor with a janitorial business on the side. We give you (and your wife in absentia) a baby shower in class one day – Surprise!
INTRO TO SPEECH - Dr. [what was your name??] You tally our “ums," without counting them against us. I give a speech on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and a Vietnam vet in his late 30s politely excuses himself, and tells me afterward it'd hurt too much to hear it. Teresa, a 37-year-old student, and hippie back in the day, raising three kids alone after her husband died of cancer, tells me they used to travel the country selling their paintings – and she’s the first one to teach me about Nicaragua in her seven minute speech, delivered campfire style, with a lamp she puts in the center of a circle she invites us to form, sitting on the floor.
INTRO TO SOCIOLOGY - Dr. Wengart. Another transplanted Texan to our Mojave Desert town. You formally introduce me to feminism.
I’m working on a B.A. in Journalism!
No. English.
I want to be like you, my Comp teacher.
I want to be like all of you, teaching hungry, grateful people like me.
I love you all!!!!
Second semester. Six of you.
I’m an English major, Journalism minor.
I write for our college newspaper. (I interview professors who went to Vietnam and Nicaragua during semester breaks, and a woman who runs a domestic violence shelter. I slam our administration for not setting a more progressive example by recycling. I interview and photograph students for our campus questions.)
One textbook I read in the library because I can’t afford to buy it.
Sometimes I plan out a week or ten days of meals on the remaining $14 I have for food – two fish sticks for Justin, two for me, and baked potatoes, or cans of soup, or eggs and toast.
I have two paying jobs – one in the college writing center.
Essays I write by pen, or type on my friend’s borrowed typewriter.
You all accept my essays in whatever forms they come in.
Pregnancy – faintings – withdrawal.
A year off. I'm married now. Proposed to at the Grand Canyon, even.
First semester back. There are three of you.
My son is four. My babies are three months old.
My two closest friends or my gramma take care of my kids when I’m in classes.
Three’s the best I can do right now.
When my kids sleep, I read and write, early in the morning, late at night, or during afternoon naps.
All is well.
Second semester back. There are three of you again.
I’m still an English major and a Journalism minor, for one last semester,
A writer and copy editor one more time for the paper.
I learn that later this year I have to move and leave school.
My grandmother takes her first and last college class with me –
History of Music in America.
Mom and Dad's California family room for 2 months
Germany for 30 months
Mom and Dad's California family room for 5 months
Sacramento for 16 months
Anoka Minnesota for 6 months
Knoxville Tennessee for 28 months
Chaska Minnesota for 16 months
Mom and Dad's family room for 5 months
Aguanga California for 51 months (a lifetime record in one place)
My sister and brother-in-law's Midwest place for 2 months
Big City, Midwest for ??? (a new lifetime record)
Wait – when I lived in Aguanga there was one of you.
Class was a 90 minute drive from home.
My oldest, 15, took the geology and matching lab course with me.
Dr. Spear, you wrote the answers for lab on the chalkboard late in each class
To copy.
I asked could I instead keep the worksheet to hand in hours later at your evening lecture class
To work out the answers myself.
"No," you said. "You'll turn it in now or you'll take an F."
I asked, "Why?"
"Because this is an assignment for a college class," you replied.
"And that's the way things WORK. In the REAL world."
So I handed you the paper, and walked out with my son.
24 months later, there were three of you.
Classes were that same 90 minute drive from home.
U.S. History, the first half - a part-time professor who worked full-time during the day and taught at night. My 13 year old unofficially joined me and my 17 year old for that class, and got an unofficial A. From outside after an exam, I saw you through the windows, leaning over to comfort a sobbing young woman who’d failed the test.
Another music class – for my son. Billy Hawkins, you told us to call you. A longtime jazz musician. You handed out cash to students who correctly answered questions you called out! Sometimes you’d even beckon confused passersby in to offer them the same chance…
Psychology of Personal and Social Adjustment - I needed a lifetime in that topic.
Shortly into the semester, 9/11.
Our Big Midwest City. There are four of you.
33 months after moving into the house,
At a huge university, I take:
ENGLISH - Textual Analysis - Dr... You tell us what the study of literature is not, and it is NOT so many of the things that made me love it.
ENGLISH - American Literature 1 - Professor... almost done with your dissertation, finishing a PhD, no time to teach this class.
POLITICAL SCIENCE - a minor? - Dr... You’re the only professor I feel a connection to here. We study the Cuban Revolution.
TEACHING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE – another minor? – Dr... You teach like a businessman. "Pragmatic," you say you are.
I feel completely out of place. I had no idea it would be so different.
My kids are 8 to 21.
Another second semester. There are four of you.
Political Science - Dr...
Political Science - Dr...
Political Science - Dr...
Linguistics at the graduate level for a Teaching ESL minor – Dr…
I've given up on the English major – it’s not what I thought it was.
One of my 17 year olds goes to Political Science classes with me sometimes.
---------- Our T.A. dies near the end of the semester.
We your students find out he is your son,
A Teaching Assistant in his mother’s political science class on Democracy.
Summer, then Fall without classes.
Maybe I won't go back.
It hurts less to not go back.
I think I’m a better mother when I’m not in school,
My spouse seems to like me a little better when I’m not in school,
I don’t have to face those classrooms where there's no one like me when I’m not in school.
A third semester starting in January. There are four of you.
ENGLISH - Literacy and Diversity - you're one of my favorites - Dr...
TEACHING ESL - language acquisition and study abroad - for the minor - Dr... You know eleven languages and are always learning one. You've taught for four decades. You often talk with me after class about language acquisition as we walk out, down the steps, and across the street.
BRITISH LITERATURE, 1800s to sort of now - almost a Dr.... I nominate you for a department award because you teach us so well. And you’re a mom, like me! You have a 6 year old daughter. You get the award. And you finish your PhD this semester!
ENGLISH - History as Memoir - almost a Dr... (For once, there are students like me in there. I don’t stand out. I can relax.) I like that you debate with us.
Spring Break ------
On the first day, an anonymous email directs me to a link.
I’m confused. I don’t have My Space.
Back and forth posts – Oh –
My spouse... is involved with someone else.
Why am I shocked; why am I shaking?
I call one of my oldest friends, crying.
My friend says, "Well, at least it's not like you guys were so in love anyway. If it was me, I’d be devastated, but you didn’t have a good marriage anyway.”
I thought I did feel devastated. Is this some lesser emotion?
She doesn’t understand. I don’t understand, either.
I want out of this melodramatic cliché – I’m not a victim - if I would just stop crying – but what was the use of trying all those years – but what choice was there anyway – but “I feel like such a loser,” I tell my friend – “You’re not a loser; he’s the loser,” she says – and I hate something false in every part of this – I just want to not be in this set of events, and what difference does any of it make, anyway – and then I keep crying for some reason.
I tell my oldest son when he gets home, who tells me his brother (one of the twins) sent the email.
He'd seen the page, and kept the information to himself
Dysfunctional in his community college writing center job that week, breaking down.
"You can't tell her till spring break," said the oldest, "or she'll lose the semester. She has midterm exams and papers. You have to wait."
I want to say I’m sorry to them then, sorry everything isn’t different, but that too sounds like melodrama.
By the end of the week, there’s a sort of reconciliation.
And I go back to school,
But the reconciliation keeps crumbling,
As others have before.
------------------------------
You, from the previous spring, who lost her son, ask me to write a piece for a book to remember him, a book for a scholarship in his name.
I agree, of course. I’m so scared
That I won’t write what I want to for you and him.
Still I write it. You so graciously say it was just what you'd hoped for.
I go to an event to launch the scholarship and book
At the end of my semester.
Summer, fall, spring.
Summer, fall, spring.
Why go back? What difference does it make anyway?
24 months after the event to remember and honor your son's life,
You invite me to join you and others for one last gathering
Before newly graduated PhDs go off to start jobs.
One of them asks me about my education.
I stopped going, I say. I didn't know where it was even going anymore.
She says, sometimes you just have to do something as well as you possibly can and see who you'll become by living through that.
Maybe I will return.
Summer.
Another first semester. There are five of you.
SPANISH - Professor ... You’re overwhelmed, but nice.
ENGLISH - Shakespeare - Dr… You’ve taught for decades here. (My oldest son takes the class with me. We read the plays out loud together and laugh.)
ENGLISH – Postcolonial. You become a friend. I love your class.
ENGLISH - a Directed Study. You’re my connection to the first time at this university – my old Literacy and Diversity professor – still a favorite.
ENGLISH - another Directed Study – Dr… Within a month, you make me regain all the old faith I had in education and then some. You’re one of those special teachers who change people’s whole lives.
Another second semester. There are three of you.
Or sort of four, or even six.
SPANISH. You and I often talk after class about the anarchists.
ENGLISH - Honor's Thesis (with a number of you involved)
ENGLISH - Environmental Literature. I feel intimidated by you. But I meet one of my dear friends, thanks to you. You make us writing partners.
ENGLISH - American Literature 2. You, the special teacher, who taught one of my directed studies and teach my American Lit class now, and will work with me on my honor's thesis - you tell me I could go to graduate school, and you meet with me regularly to talk about literature and listen to my personal stories, and you treat me as a friend.
But near the end of the semester, you have news.
You're moving to take a job 1000 miles away.
Because you have no job security here. (Contingent faculty… and not to get too legalistic here, but our legislature tried to make the U give one year notices for not rehiring, so the U got around that by “firing” them every time they hired them for one more year – and these institutional details sure do play out in real people’s lives.)
And you're only my teacher - well, kind of my friend –
And I guess a kind of mentor and hero in my mind.
Reasonably or not, I feel heartbroken.
Summer. Writing. California.
My uncle has Parkinson’s (no - later they change it to ALS), his muscles collapsing so soon after diagnosis.
A third semester. There are three of you.
Or six or seven.
SPANISH. You’re a grad student with another year to go to PhD. And you do a good job with us.
ENGLISH - Creative Writing Nonfiction Graduate Level. I think you think I'm stupid and dislike me, but I would not have missed this class. I write some of my stories.
HORTICULTURE with a Lab - another science requirement after all. You, the class teacher, and you the lab teacher – you’re both nice men with lots of enthusiasm for your topic, but this has no applicability in my life after all – no organic gardening methods here, and I gave up my minor in Teaching ESL to get this requirement meant – but sometimes we have fun in the lab.
ENGLISH - Honor's Thesis (three of you - one from 1000 miles away). I write over 70 pages for you all – well, more for you, my political science professor whose son was our T.A., and most of all for you, my Directed Study, American Lit professor who takes my efforts so seriously, and who makes me feel that we’re part of something heroic.
I graduate –
B.A. in English, minor in Political Science, summa cum laude.
Spring semester. I'm not in school. But there is one of you.
I keep asking for your feedback on my 70 plus page honors thesis.
You send me a 9 page response from 1000 miles away
And I keep reading it.
I apply to a master's program knowing I can't go without a fellowship.
So I try to plan what I will really do.
Three of you write recommendation letters for my application.
I get the fellowship. I get the fellowship.
I will go to graduate school.
I take my two younger kids to stay with my uncle and aunt in California for two weeks because my uncle is dying – my great friend, my sort of other dad.
I email you from there, trying to not succumb to despair
Seeing my uncle being killed by ALS.
You send me an email of understanding and hope.
My sons graduate with B.A.s at the end of the semester.
Summer.
I don’t know how to be at home.
My spouse and I have lived separated in the same house for years now.
But he waits and waits for me to finish my education. He wants me to have my chance.
I take cross-country driving trips with my kids.
I don’t know where I belong anymore.
A first semester at a new university. There are three of you.
And there is always one of you, also - my friend.
I drown you in email, as I've done for so long, because you’re so far away.
I’m trying to understand who I am now.
My uncle is dying. I call him on drives home at night.
I tell you I can't keep up with the work of graduate school.
I say something good is going away and it's never coming back.
Everything is bleak.
I hate reading so much theory,
Reading all these efforts people made to make sense of human life,
Crammed into my mind like that, seeming so futile.
My uncle dies the day after Thanksgiving.
I fly to California and stay for over a week, waiting for the funeral.
I come back to winter and three long papers to write.
I don’t know how I can do it.
I cry through so many days, trying to write from morning till night.
You're drowning in work,
But you take my emails and respond when you can.
When I fall into despair again and again,
You say you thought I was doing so well. What happened?
Others of you give me extensions –
You all tell me to keep writing
And I make it.
You send me an email telling me how proud you are of me.
And you tell me what you said in your recommendation letter.
And I cry and laugh and smile.
Another second semester, and there are three of you.
And always one more from afar.
I grow brighter as the semester moves us toward spring.
One of you saves my grad student life with your lighter work load –
From you, I learn so many lessons about creating a restorative class.
One of you reminds me of a gentleman scholar, emphasis on the gentle, gathering us together for studies in the English Renaissance.
And one of you teaches transnational literature and theory. Like all great teachers, you make me feel that our work together is a cause.
I am one of you, this semester - just a little. Not really.
I’m an upaid community ed. English as a Second Language teacher.
Summer. I go to California
And Idaho to see my parents who have retired there.
Another third semester; three of you again.
You who taught my brittle shaky self Native American Literature my first semester – you teach 19th Century American Women’s Rhetoric. I tell you, “I think I need this class!” I’m stronger this time around. And I realize how strong and open and caring you are.
You – a new you – have agreed to an independent study of working-class literature with me – and we meet almost every week for a good two hours -- how generous you are.
And you who taught transnational texts – I take your class on Occupy and writing resistance, and again – our work is a cause. I ask you to advise my final project next semester.
And one from afar. Well, you’re my friend; but these verbal distinctions sometimes fall short of the realities they must stretch themselves around. Teacher... friend... where does one leave off and the other begin?
Last semester. There are three of you for my committee.
One, my advisor, also teaches a class you allow me to be part of as a guest.
And one far away.
I write my master's project
On ascending through education,
And all the complicated threads running through these ‘upward’ stories – the inequalities they reveal as they supposedly testify to access and mobility – and I don’t want to do this cynically, because I know how much it still means.
I graduate with an M.A. in English.
Summer. I apply for a job to teach a class in the fall at the university I’ve graduated from. My working-class literature independent study professor who was on my committee who I consider my friend – he hires me. He gives me a chance to teach. It is a gift I’ll never forget.
First semester, there is one of me.
And one of you far away,
And others of you nearby and not so near.
I love you all.
Maybe I am one of you now.
***
Postscript:
During the first semester of my master's program, I wanted so badly to write about my experience as a nontraditional student while the last round as an undergrad was still fresh in my mind and while I was living the graduate part of the experience. What I imagined, at least, was a book -- a personal narrative with some theory woven into it in an accessible way. My imagined audience would be first and foremost other nontraditional students (or those considering that path), and then those who teach and learn with them as well as those who try to set policies affecting them. I found a multitude of books about educating students like us (some excellent), but what I needed so badly during those years was to read other accounts of those who'd gone through similar experiences. I wanted to not feel so alone in that journey. And I imagined, at least, that I had it in me then to write it. But that first semester soon overwhelmed me in its workload, and I gave up the idea. By the second semester, I'd lost the urgency and couldn't remember what it was I ever had to say about it all anyway.
And now -- well, now I feel at least some space opening up in my head again. I have more time, especially during some weeks, so that I could devote my mornings to it. Maybe I have something to say again. I'm not sure. It's one thing to write for this blog without my full name, and it's another to write something that I even try to send out into the world with my name. I didn't have my experiences alone. As I told a friend recently, I'm not Thoreau writing primarily about my experience in the woods (although he did slam his local society and nation pretty hard). My life is so bound up with the lives of others, Telling my story means telling some of other people's, too. And I struggle with the question of how to do that ethically, even when what I say is overwhelmingly positive.
Meanwhile, the transcript-poem-plain prose-hybrid I just wrote was an attempt to at least get SOMETHING down on the page -- some way to see the sweep of it as it spanned those years. I'm not sure if that will be the beginning and end of the 'whole' account of my nontraditional student experience, or if I will finally be able to write a lot more about it as a personal narrative.
Even in this post with a limited audience, I struggled with telling about what happened during my spring break of 2007. And I've struggled with leaving it in. It feels too personal to me to include. But most of the women I know (including myself of course) who have held off on our education (some forever) or interrupted it (some repeatedly) have done so in part because we decided to put our personal relationships first. Or sometimes we were too wounded in those relationships to find the strength to venture into what can be rather cold institutional classes. In those times, we yearn for friendship, not alienation.
I'm not at all arguing for some simplistic inversion of this -- putting one's formal education and the work connected to that before all personal relationships. Rather, we have to shatter that binary; we have to break through the either/or of personal relationships versus continued commitment to learning and teaching in these institutions. That's why I chose to also call the post "Dear Teachers." A small number of teachers did break through that boundary into forging friendships with me. Without friendship, I don't think I could have continued. I don't mean that the friendships were a means to some bigger end -- the bigger end being "getting my education." Rather, friendship became so intertwined with my education that they both became, not end-goals, but life itself. But this postscript is getting too long for me to say more about that right now. Maybe I am ready to write that narrative.
What a wonderful poem. It speaks to many of things with which I struggle. You are smart and creative as usual dear. Miss you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jiji
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jiji!!! I miss YOU so much!!! You are a great friend.
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