I've been sort of distracted this week by my new piece of technology, the LG C2000 camera phone. I like to make my brother refer to it as such because otherwise it's a pretty unremarkable phone, but calling it the LG C2000 makes it sound like I could cure cancer with it, or at least something like psoriasis. Cingular and I were in a fight for most of the summer but this month I passed them a note and a couple hundred dollars during social studies and now we're BFFs again and so they allowed me a new cell phone upgrade. I picked the free one, and I'm pretty pleased with what I got. It has speakerphone, which excites me immensely, and it also takes decent pictures like the one below. I felt very Thomas Hart Benton-esque, capturing the grimness of the rural heartland while pulling into the Casey's on the way home from work.
Anyway, my other source of distraction has been a kind of inventory of my life, professionally and personally and otherwise, and where I'd like to proceed from here. I think I gave an erroneous impression with my last post about depression, and so now I'm sort of cringing thinking about the people who are unnecessarily worried about me. I'm really not on the verge of offing myself, I swear. The post on depression was a reflective one and it's something I can write about only because I've pretty much made my peace with it and moved on. No need to hide the razor blades and the complimentary snack bowls of uppers while I'm at your house; I'm just fine. Also, I'm really not that lame of a pumpkin carver...I was just in a hurry.
The life inventory mostly has to do with where I'd like to be this time next year, and the dawning realization is that I'd really like to be back in school. I feel horribly guilty about this because I have a great job. The people I work with are wonderful, they pretty much let me do whatever, and so far nothing I've done is wrong. I'm in an incredible situation, and so the fact that the only way I could describe teaching when a friend asked me about it was "It's...easy" disheartened me immensely. Because that's pretty much what I think about my job; it's really really easy and also I get to wear jeans on Friday. I have extremely strong opinions on the education crisis in America (if there really is one), but I don't think that teaching 7 year olds how to sing "Shoo Fly" is really doing much to fix it. And truthfully, I feel really irresponsible in any job where I'm not completely head over heels in love with what I'm doing, or at least handsomely compensated and rewarded each December with junkets to Barbados.
So basically, I would really like to be back in school. I miss being a scholar, and researching and doing ridiculous statistics that I never quite understand no matter how many times I plug in the numbers. I miss the intensity of academia, because even in the Chucky Cheese gameroom that is the field of education, the people there are scientists. They may study jam-faced little nippers and whether blue or red crayons make them learn better, but in the field of post-secondary education research, that's SERIOUS BUSINESS and they attack those subjects with the zeal of a surgeon performing brain surgery. Also, (and this is horribly embarrassing to admit), I really can't handle waking up at 6:00 anymore and walking into a bright building with perky women wearing Charlie Brown shirts who say "Good morning!" like there is even a remote possibility that it actually COULD be a good morning before my first round of Folgers has adequately stimulated my nervous system. No one at college would dare wear Charlie Brown shirts, and for that I would be immensely grateful.
I need a challenge. I need to pull an all-nighter trying to finish a term paper. I need to sit for hours and hours in graduate seminars doodling on my dayplanner and wondering what the professor's talking about. I need to have conversations with people my own age who aren't "passionate about kindergarten" and married with twin girls named Peyton and Bailey and who have opinions on Very Important Things and maybe also not so important things that would still not involve who's bringing which enchilada casserole to the birthday luncheon and how much we should spend on our Secret Santa presents this year and if I have to attend one more meeting where I talk about my feelings or pass around a compliment jar or laugh knowingly about menopause or chocolate or anything at all that is representative of the female gender I will GO MOTHER EFFING INSANE.
Ahem.
So, I need a change. And suggestions. Preferably in career for next year, but if you happen to know of a killer yoga studio with competitive rates I'd totally be into that too.
2 comments:
Well, you know what they say about grad school. If there is anything else in the entire world that you could be happy doing, you should do that instead.
Seriously, they do say that. Also one guy reports that first year grad students have stress levels three times as high as people whose spouse has recently died. I don't know exactly how you quantify something like that, but I do know that I quit eating and cried a lot my first year.
That said, I hear a lot about inanities of elementary school teachers. They are their own breed and they make David crazy.
Grad school hours are much better and, depending on your department, you might have lots of events that offer free wine and cheese and coffee. Perhaps it does come out as a clear winner after all.
Seriously though I didn't know you were thinking about this. How serious are you?
I honestly don't know how serious I am. On a day when it's 8:15 am and I've already been at my desk for an hour doing paperwork and soon I'll be facing 30 surly 10 year olds I'd say I want to be in grad school NOW NOW NOW. On good days when I look at the five year list of "Composers of the Quarter" I have on a Post-It on my filing cabinet and I think about how great this job is and how stable my life could be in a few months I wonder if going back to school would be the biggest mistake of my life.
I can't figure out which way I want to be fulfilled, if that makes sense.
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