Training II: (Trying it Again) On My Own

Lucky for me, the semester is over and I graduated. Two years of my life spent on my MA and finally complete. I am unusually at-ease right now; the competing forces of “Damn, I wish I could go back” and “Damn, I’m glad I’m done” are at a sort-of stalemate known (to me) as mental tranquility.

I am exactly where I need to be in my career. Graduate school was both a great mental strain as well as a boon to my knowledge and abilities. Not to mention my confidence. We are on Winter holiday now and I am finishing my syllabi and other teaching materials for the coming term. As the title of this post indicates, I feel as though I am feeling around in a dark room full of straw trying to grab one particular straw that connects my past education with my future vocation.

“Sounds about like how EKU was for me, too.” According to my cousin Zach.
I have had very little help (outside of designated class time and one chat) from my professors as I go about getting everything in line to teach next semester.

Hop in a time machine with me, set your clocks back a week and let’s pretend the Fall 20009 semester is still in full effect. As the semester wound down and final assignments came due and commencement day grew closer and closer… I lost the ability to focus. In fact, I was so boggled that I couldn’t bring myself to post a blog. It was a week ago today as a matter of fact that I tried to write this post:

Training II: Here I Go Again, On My Own

So today it becomes official; I have graduated and I am in line to begin filling the heads of 29 students with knowledge immeasurable; I still need a second job though. Or third, if substitute teaching counts. Or fourth, if trying to get paid as a freelance writer and editor counts. Today is the first day of my life as a chap with a Master’s degree, no job, and plenty of debt.

The point here is this: I can’t find anyone with the time to say “Hey Ben, I think your first lecture should concern…”. It’s really beginning to unnerve me. Today, for instance, I waited for at least an hour to speak with a professor who coordinates Freshman Composition programs. To no avail. He was in a meeting with someone else and couldn’t see me.

Not a big deal. I am writing about one of my favorite professors from graduate school. I’m not trying to demonize him. We have been trying to coordinate a meeting for about a week and a half now and it seems like every time I am busy every time he is free and vice versa. I’m hoping we’ll be able to coordinate another meeting sometime soon: preferably tomorrow or Friday, but no later than around the middle of January. Sounds like a wide swath, yes, but the university—and those who work there—shuts down, I mean it’s a ghost town—over all breaks.

Perhaps it’s my own damned fault for taking an extra semester—i. e. taking my leisure—to finish graduate school and thus begin teaching in a Spring semester instead of a Fall one, before which there would have been an orientation seminar. I need a damned seminar because it seems to me that I’m not going to be able to scrape together enough testimony from friends and professors to amount to a hill of shit.

So there we go. Reset your clocks and come back to Christmas Eve-eve. I suppose it’s taken me a week to calm down after the semester has ended. Everything went as planned, though whether or not my feelings of inadequacy are “my own damned fault” remains to be seen. I’m at my parents’s house for the holidays before going to Tampa to see Emily and her family.

As I’ll relate in a subsequent (and hopefully more eloquent) post, things are really, really looking up as far as getting in-line for the semester is concerned. I have my office, phone, email, parking tag and and and… all for next semester. This is going to happen!! Next post in a few hours. Time to “monetize” this blog. :-D

ZGXEAGB6BNZ6