What Comes Next?
I really enjoyed Holly’s recent newsletter, “I Really Need to Get Going.”
It can be overwhelming, when listing all the things one
needs to do.
“[But] there will always be another group of really
needs after these are done,” Holly offers. And, she adds, “[However] today,
the best thing to do was lie beneath the sweetgum tree on a sweet June day and
watch the clouds above turn summersaults.”
I’m looking ahead, planning out what I need to do for this next phase of life. Getting through all the paperwork feels oddly familiar, like grading papers. Then I realized …
I’ve been teaching forty years. FORTY years. FORTY ***
YEARS!
I've taught at high school, community college, university
and graduate schools. I’ve taught English as a Second Language, British
Lit, Children's Lit, Writing Tech Reports, Critical Theory, and Harry Potter
(yes, Harry Potter and the hero’s journey!). I've taught Critical Research, Graduate
Research Strategies, Graduate Reading Strategies. Business Writing. Creative
Writing. Graduate Thesis Writing one, two and three. Graduate Literature
Studies. The Business of Writing. Editing and Line-editing. Composition one and
two, and three.
And, I earned all the relevant certifications to keep going.
BUT I didn’t make tenure because I was too old, and didn’t – couldn’t -- create
a strong sense of community among the full-timers (because I was too crazy busy trying to keep a roof
over my head and paying for my own medical insurance.) Still, one director did
just send me a cute little cup to celebrate 20 plus years at one department.
(By the way, adjuncts hold the system together. I could go
on, but I'd get rather frothy about how the system treats adjuncts...)
After reading Holly’s list of things that need to be done, and
what really needs to be done, I realized I survived for forty years, on my own,
keeping a cabin’s roof over my head for most of those years, making my own way doing (mostly) what I
want beyond what I need. May not always have been the wisest of choices, but
they’ve always been my choices. No wonder I’ve grown up to be such a roguish –
and unmuzzled -- loggerhead.
So, what am I going to do next? Whatever I want. The
possibilities are endless. Maybe I’ll be a pirate. And watch the clouds.
Photo: Mary Read, in a colorized engraving (date unknown). Getty Images / Hulton Archive
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