This post is gonna be more of a journal entry, but being all extroverted and completely without a sense of privacy, y'all get to read it! I want to write down my thoughts about a few school decisions, the relative importance of many of my values, and what I want to be when I grow up.
You can see my earlier thoughts about these issues and my values heirarchy here.
First, what started this whole fiasco/excellent change was Sunday afternoon. Livy was stir-crazy, the day was lovely, and I wanted to go to the park with Livy, Jenn, Brendan, Ryan, Morgan, and Sean. But I had homework to do. A lot of homework. So much homework that thinking about it made my lower eyelid twitch. And yet, seven year olds need to play at the park. And 31 year olds need to socialize with their friends. So there was a conflict. I decided to go to the park, but I felt completely guilty about leaving my homework undone. I had basically made this decision based on how much guilt I would feel, and there would have been more for preventing Livy from having a normal seven year old day.
Suddenly my mind exploded! What am I doing living life based on guilt, it thought? How on earth can I carry this on for years? How can I choose between my child and my work? Am I actually happy in this situation?
When I took time to introspect about what I was feeling (my pile of homework was too high for introspection!), I realized that I didn't feel like myself. I'm more of an Anne Shirley than a Dagny Taggart. I am not happy when almost all of my time and energy is devoted to one value. I know this about myself; I have long since accepted that I will never be the kind of person who pushes through misery to get to a goal. I don't like misery. I only do things that I can do happily.
I think I got caught up in the mood of graduate school. Most people have the attitude that you work night and day, give up other values, and when you come out on the other side, you can start living your life and being happy. I got sucked into the ambition and the competitiveness. I wanted to take lots of classes cause I am a good student! But I forgot that it takes time to be a good mom, a good lover, a good friend, a good business-starter, and a good introspector. And I can't do without any of those values right now.
So, I withdrew from a class. That might not seem like a big deal, and honestly, it's not. It only seems like a big deal to me because so much of my identity was built on being the star student. Who was I? I was the smart one. So when I am in school, I slip back into that pattern. Who am I now? I'm the free-spirited one. I'm the one who does positive discipline. I'm the one who reads. I'm the one who loves Aaron. I'm the one who makes the beef stock. I'm the one who goes to the park. I have developed this multi-faceted identity (that I wish I had developed much earlier), and being back in school sometimes makes it hard to remember how necessary all these new parts of me are.
Once I realized that I needed to withdraw from one of my classes, I still had to figure out which one. I was taking three: Middle English, American English, and Composition Pedagogy. I really really liked Middle English and Composition Pedagogy, but I think I probably liked Middle English the best. And that's the one I dropped.
Why on earth did I drop my favorite class? Because I finally decided what I want to be when I grow up. When I came back to grad school, I knew I wanted to teach on a college level. But I wasn't sure if I wanted to focus on rhetoric and composition or on literature. For me, it's basically the choice between a focus on teaching writing at a community college or going on to get a PhD and spending much of my time researching and writing. Though I love to read, I don't love to research, and I finally realized I'll be much happier learning about composition and pedagogy and spending the vast majority of my time teaching.
And I like teaching undergrads, even marginal kind of students. I've always enjoyed the challenge of teaching people that others labeled unteachable. I'll get to do that (and not have to write books) if I get my MA in rhet/comp and teach locally.
I'm relieved to figure out what to do because now I can get started taking required classes. These first two semesters I've been kind of dabbling to figure out what I want. But I will only be taking two classes, and I will be pursuing tons of other values all at the same time. Introspecting about what I need and making it happen has made me feel like myself again. No longer caught up in a swiftly moving current, but skipping along the banks in the sun.
