by Lucy S.
I've spent another long day alternating between my computer, the books stacked around me, and my old standby - one of those big multi-sectioned spiral notebooks of the kind I used for years as journals. When my brain has felt overloaded, I've switched over to emails and Facebook to quickly write or read another article someone posted and share or like some of them. I even added a bunch of books and music that I like, for some reason - something I've never bothered much with before. When I feel nervous, I tend to gravitate toward anything to attach my focus to when I'm taking a break form the main activity. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works to keep sheer panic from filling up my otherwise free-floating mind.
Tomorrow I go to the campus to make copies of the syllabus for the students, scan book excerpts, make other copies, check out the classroom where I'll be teaching, and do anything else I can to feel ready to teach a college class for the very first time. Justin, my oldest son - my steady help in so many things over the years - is going with me to help me scan, in case I don't understand quickly enough what I'm supposed to do. This way, he can keep showing me, if need be. I want to figure out how to use the computer in class, too. I don't want students to think I seem lost or dumb. I want to seem like a real professor.
And so I move from being a student to being a teacher at a college. This stuns me. I don't think I've ever quite figured out how to tell myself or anyone else this story of going to school, and going back to school, and back again, and again, and finally ending up at a point I've never been at in my life. I wrote a master's essay which engaged critically with the idealized American 'success story' - the tale of ascension, of upwardness, for the person who keeps trying, works hard, cares enough, has something worthy to contribute... I said that these stories which work to inspire hope and prove the possibility of mobility for some always at the same time prove immobility for most, because the whole 'plot' basis rests in someone beating the odds - showing that there are odds to beat. Yes, I wrote all that, and I feel it keenly. But, oh man, when you are the one trying, you can't really be cynical about it. At least, I can't be.
There's no pot of gold waiting at the end. Within my circle - those I'm closest to - there is some amazement that one of us could travel this path and end up as a college teacher (!!!). But I know that in the discipline itself, I will be someone with "only" a master's, and I also know that the difference is not at ALL "just a piece of paper." I know the enormous amount of work those pieces of paper take. And I've chosen to go to school for something that I probably can't earn much of a living at. That's wrong. We who do this work, even the non-tenured, deserve to make living wages. I aim to be part of that struggle. But at the same time, I know that I did this because I have always loved the core work itself - the reading, writing, talking, creating whatever fragile communities we can build together... I didn't do it to 'climb' but rather to 'be' - to be immersed in these efforts, to be able to share these yearnings with others, to continually learn and seek. Maybe that sounds too romanticized and too stereotypical. But it's true.
I've been reading about narratives, trying to choose readings for my students about them, trying to take notes that will become my own points to make in class. We take these hours and days and frame them into stories with meanings and form - beginnings, middles, and endings that aren't just random, but that convey something important. And I've been trying to create or recognize what mine is and what larger stories it in turn fits into.
I've also been gathering a collection of readings for this class on the topic of "why literature," meaning: why does literature matter, and why does it matter for everyone to experience great stories and poetry? I was just thinking right now that for me, I read and write in order to both immerse myself in the flow of history (personal and societal) and to paradoxically freeze time. I read and write in order to stand outside the rush, to stay still and to go back to a time and stay still in it again. I read and write to hold onto people and places and times, and to understand.
But I don't know whee I am in this story yet.
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