'Tis the SeasonI looked back a year to see what I wrote about then, hoping desparately to find a topic (cue Bob and Doug MacKenzie, eh). This is what I found:
Imagine Blankness I was going to leave this area blank, to represent the relative state of my mind, but then I thought, given the relative state of my mind, I wouldn't have gotten the point.
I guess I have found a pattern. Heck of a thing, this being a teacher.
Thirty years ago I was finishing teaching my first class, as a graduate student at the University of Oregon. Ok, so that first one was a Recitation for a humungo gigantic College Algebra class (several hundred students), but it was my start. For two hours a week, I had to explain what Jim Van Buskirk had said during the lectures. The cool thing was that I didn't have to actually have to attend the lectures to do so: I knew the subject matter intimately. I was a teacher. By the time I left Oregon, I was the first grad student there to ever have her own Calculus sequence: Calculus I, II, and III at the same time each quarter in 1980-81 (don't ask why 3 quarters makes a whole) . That was done for less that $4000 a year. Summer pay was worse, but it was something. It was really pretty disgraceful. It still is.
So as a graduate student, I couldn't afford Christmas. Fortunately this was pre-electronic gadgets, so my daughter got some pretty cool stuff given the circumstances. [One year, when she was in high school, it as a Tandy 2000 with 4K memory and a tape drive from her maternal grandmother. Who knew?]
Living hand to mouth didn't get that much better over the years. Getting paid once a month never helped, since Christmas comes towards the end of the month and bills are going to be due soon. December's check comes before Christmas, but if you use any of that, how are you going to make it to February? Always worrying about money, when I should have been worrying about teaching and learning. In hindsight, there was so much wasted effort. But that was then. I got better.
Eventually I realized that even having the money wasn't the problem. I can afford Christmas this year. But I haven't had any time to even think about it. Gifts? For whom? Me? Really, I never have a freaking clue. Other people? Ah yes, there's the rub. As school ends, I have absolutely no time to unwind because I now have to shop. Holiday spirit? Where? My historical association with Christmas hasn't helped. I shared some of that here yesterday evening.
Five years at Oregon, three at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 16 at Central Arkansas, one year as an adjunct at Montclair State and Bloomfield and now five more years at Bloomfield. Tenured twice, in two different fields. Who knew? Me and Joseph Campbell? Well, other folks, too, of course.
What do I want for Christmas? I want that which nobody can give me. I want Time. Just over yonder is another semester, with new demands and challenges. At best I may get a couple of days to vegetate.
I should grade today, but I haven't received everything yet. Slowly it is arriving. Deadline is "before I get to school on Monday". I have three students I've not heard from, one who did an independent study that can't get to campus until Monday morning, one who used the absolute last few bytes of his email box to ask me how to submit his work (I know this because my email back to him revealed his mailbox was full. I hope he reads the message I left him in Blackboard.), and four who have submitted only part of their final projects and presumably are still working on them. I may use a vegetation day instead and watch Tiger play golf. Or I could clean the house.
--Robyn Elaine Serven --Bloomfield College, NJ |