(no subject)

[d_aulnoy]

P.S. - I feel guilty for not working today. Guilty. Jesus. It's almost as though, in my head, the teaching isn't a job - not even when it's a straight eight hours, no lunch-break, no nothing - but only the stuff which gets my work, my name, out there. The reviews, the essays, the titles, the editing all qualify as outright work, but(in my head, my crazy, wacky head) the teaching is ... a pleasure and an obligation all rolled up in one. I enjoy it. Well, okay, I enjoy half of it. But that's not why ... I also enjoy writing. It's mainly as thought the teaching is a given - I MUST do this - while the writing is a bonus. I need to engage in both activities: I honestly cannot picture a life in which I wouldn't do the one or the other, or, more specifically, the both occupations. I also think that it can be attributed, roughly, to the same reasons that make me enjoy music, and cooking, and other "ephemeral" arts, but not engage in them ... there's no tangible, lasting result. Teaching goes further: in its own way, those results are the longest lasting (which is why I do do *that,* as opposed to singing or cooking), but the greatest sense of satisfaction? Identical, emotionally, comes from looking at a piece I've crafted in metal and stone, and a piece that will be out there in paper and ink. Hm. Immortality complex, much?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Ten years ago, I was a teacher. I held onto teaching a few years longer than I possibly should have; whatever the problems, it was a position where, at least to some people, I actually inspired a certain amount of respect.

Don't get me wrong. The pay was miserable; a few stupid little beasts were always, always seeming to think that plagiarized papers don't instantly jump out at any reader with a brain; and the fastest-gun-in-the-West politicking rivalled anything I've encountered since. But I did have some brilliant students, people I still think fondly of, whom I hope have done better than I. And in almost every class, there would come some point where--even if only for one or two people in an otherwise soporific room--I could feel something happening. Leading a particularly good discussion, being in the midst of it, actually getting someone to go in their head somewhere they'd clearly never quite been before--it felt very much as I imagine surfing must. (Weekends spent grading miserable essays about seatbelt-wearing were the price.)

I don't miss the job. But I miss that about it.

Fred H.