Where do I get off...

Late January, 2013

Where do I get off thinking I can teach anyone anything? How is it that I have come to this position of authority, and how is it that even now I am questioning my direction in life? I'm almost 50, that's how it is.

I have so wanted these many years to be teaching classes just like the night class I have right now, full of diverse backgrounds and various voices. These are the students I remember of my own community college days, young, un-trained, anxious to get going with their college years. I was one of them, and perhaps, even now, I still am.

It feels that way. I feel that I have invested, am investing a huge chunk of my life into this endeavor at the cost of many other aspects of my life which frankly are far more relevant to who I am today. The novel Drum must come out. I am committed to that; and yet I have decided to pursue this other branch of teaching which seems to be placing me right on the edge of my competence as a professional. It is also draining my energy to focus on the novel. It is these two challenging elements that are pushing right up against the person I have become.

My students want to be present and engaged, want to achieve what it is they need to achieve from the class, driven by their own sense of direction in their lives. Am Im, the newbie, in some critical way, letting them down? My attitude about this class reflects my attitude about teaching in general: it waffles from feelings of elation to feelings of ineptitude. It is the latter that I'm trying to climb away from at the moment.

I turn the big five-oh next week. I'm trying to see it as I have see my age all my adult life: a number like the one before it, the one after it. I will continue to live my life the way I see fit, and I will not attach myself, as so many do, to their age. This I resolve: to wander in my life as have I always. It is the wandering that keeps me awake and curious (this in the grinning face o' the jester).

So, advise I to myself, work through this class O teacher. Listen to the students, read them. Keep what they value close to your heart so that what they know and learn becomes your own growth in time.