Once upon a time...

I was a researcher. I was savvy, smart, and incredibly tenacious. I worked hard for months on end and kept to a routine. So why is it when I look back at my dissertation, at my rigor, it seems like it was someone else? I read the words, feel the world I was in, as if it were yesterday and yet, it feels like an eternity ago, another lifetime, another body.

The job I have now, at the college I am currently working, does not really let me be a researcher. There is not a mentor to push me, not someone who is a researcher to work with. I am not sure that I am a teacher either. I am approached as a prophet, as if I have a code, a key that I can give to another and then they will also possess the power of the written word to be passed on to their children. I teach, but I dont think that it changes the ways these teachers will go about their jobs later. I try to balance high expectations with the need for spoon-feeding, knowing that most will not cross the river with me, they can't. They actually cannot even see there is a river. So, a teacher, I am not sure that I am. So, the very thing that I love about my job, the teaching, isn't really the same, or as rewarding as, teaching young children. While children come to school wanting to be engaged, wanting to learn interesting things, these students mostly want to be done as fast as possible. They take as many courses as possible and are upset when they cant get it all done. Yet, they don't make time for the work. I have figured out something important however: When a lifelong student is out of school, they want back in. When they are in school, they want out. I want to want to do my work. Does that make sense? I want to want to. I don't have that.

I am feeling better after that damn cold knocked me out for the entire weekend. I even missed out on having Logan come and play here. I hate that! My kid time is very important to me. So, he and Karen are coming by tomorrow for breakfast so I get a little bit of Logo time. I just adore him. I am about to go make some hot dogs in celebration of the Super Bowl.