For the first time in four years, I'm back in a graduate class. Classes at my job started two weeks ago; classes I'm enrolled in start Monday. And I'm terrified - and overjoyed. I ride a quick emotional roller coaster between the two. Not because of the subject matter, so much, because this degree is in something about which I'm very passionate, but it's also far enough outside my comfort zone that I have the feeling I'll be posting many "I'm afraid I don't understand" discussion board threads.
The program? The Social Responsibility and Sustainable Communities Master's at Western Kentucky University.
I have a feeling that between now and May 2014, I'll be even more absent from Kosland than before. But those of you who 'know' me in the Kos-sense know that I've graduate hours in history and an unfinished thesis that has been sucking the life from me for the past several years. I'm not happy with the convict lease system. I'm not happy with prisoner abuse. I'm not happy with the exploitative system of labor run by my best friends' great grand-uncle that built my hometown and the town where I lived while in college in South Mississippi. The fact is, that no matter how much I love history, what I'm doing with it now makes me miserable.
So I came across this program. Actually, I've been talking about it for a couple of years now with the director and her husband, both of whom are dear friends and two of the kindest people you could ever want to know. And in the end, I was looking for something else entirely two weeks ago when I scrolled past my friend's name on the big red page. I emailed her immediately to find out if I could start in spring.
And two weeks later, I'm filling out tuition waivers and ordering transcripts. Yesterday, I met with the group. There are 27 of us, from several walks of life. We are mostly women, with three men. I'm willing to wager I'm the fourth or fifth oldest. There are several fresh-out-of-undergrad students.
This, for a moment, made me feel older than dirt.
As I scrolled through the course requirements, I could feel myself getting a little giddy. This is for me. I know it is. I just hope that after I'm a couple of weeks into the 'Community Based Research' class that I still feel that way. I'm a historian. Doing the kind of research they're talking about in this class makes me so nervous - IT HAS NUMBERS! NUMBERS THAT DON'T COME IN GROUPS OF 4! Hence the terror.
But I cracked one of the texts yesterday, last night, really, after the orientation meeting two hours across the state in Bowling Green. And on the first page, facing the table of contents, I found a favorite quote from Dreams from My Father. "The only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around a common vision.... [Community] organizing teaches as nothing else does the beauty and strength of everyday people."
People ask me what I want to do with this degree. They ask me why I don't just suck it up and finish the goddamned thesis for the other one. They ask me if I'm serious about the program, as if I'd just told them I bought a singularly outlandish purchase, like a Hummer.
I can't see myself leaving education. Ever. It's in my blood. I may be adopted, but I am, for better or for worse, a third-generation educator. I'm as comfortable talking about history in front of students as I am uncomfortable talking about myself. Ultimately, I would very much like to find myself in a position where I'm able to teach and lead faculty in integrating the principles of sustainability into their courses. An ethical, renewable, sustainable sort of instructional design person that would help faculty see the ways to bring sustainability as an objective into their curriculum.
I can't think of a better time, a more important time, for this program to be available to students. Look at the world around us! I live in the middle of "tea party" land. The home of McConnell and Bunning and Paul, where people wave their little 4x6 flags right over the poor and homeless as they head out to the lakes for a long weekend. Is there any better time for this program to be there for people who want to learn? Could the dire need our country has for the maligned 'community organizer' be any more evident? That's why I'm enrolling. That's why I'm doing the incredibly stupid "take two classes and work full time" that I've gone and done. Because it is so obvious that what our country needs are some people with the skill set to empower and organize our brothers and sisters to affect positive change. Progressive change.
I count myself incredibly lucky that I'm close enough to WKU to be enrolled in it, that I have a job that will pay for it, and that I have a family that will support me as I essentially desert them for the next two years. And in the end, I do hope for the best, although I'm still terrified about the flat communication in the online environment, the readings, and the math that I feel coming down the way. I'm actually most concerned that I'm not smart enough for all this. That I'll get in discussion the first night and make an ass of myself. That writing for this program won't come as easily for me as writing here or in history always has. It keeps me up nights, the worrying.
And yet.
I'm still excited.