cool kids

I'm not sure what it means, that I feel most at ease when bantering back and forth with an older generation of academics in our little corner of the institution. And I do mean that...the adjunct work space is in a hidden-away corner of the institution. They aren't really my peers: several Baby-Boomers with grandchildren, mostly Gen X with kids in middle to high school. I'm one of the oddballs. I know there are more of us, but they don't seem to hang out in the corner.

And the weird thing is that I'm okay with that. I don't really want to be reminded of my own generation anymore. Neither those of us who are "making it," nor those of us who suffer from underemployment. I'm insanely jealous of the thirty-somethings with jobs, and hearing about unemployment makes me ill. It seems the more I read about possibly pursuing a PhD and making this academic thing more of a career than just paying the bills, the more I believe it is a terrible idea. And not in the Hollywood, bad-decisions-lead-to-happy-endings sort of way.

My generation seems to be lost. Or at least I am. Of the two "Xennials" writing in this bittersweet article in Good magazine, I side with the admitted "malcontent" born in 1983. I'm right there with you, pal.

But I don't want to hang out with you.

There has to be some name for it--if not, I could come up with one all my own--this compulsion to seek out people who are different, to be lost in the heterogeneous crowd. I always felt better walking around the city by myself. Having a friend along on roadtrips always made it more stressful. Conversing casually with strangers is infinitely easier than opening up to closer acquaintances.

My fear is that the strangers in the adjunct corner aren't strangers anymore. They ask me about Dad, and I share what's going on in my life outside work. I ask them about their wives and kids and travel plans. Horror of horrors! It's wrong, isn't it? Shouldn't I socialize with people who are in the same life stage as I am? What life stage is that, exactly? Chronically stuck. Circling the drain. Failed to launch.

I just had the thought that my musings about the adjunct corner do not qualify as cultural clash. Maybe I'm not so different from the other teachers, despite decades of life in between. That just makes my lack of those "signifiers of success" that much more painful. How did I get into a Gen X mindset without all the Gen X bells and whistles? Where is my mortgage? Where is my white picket fence? Shouldn't I have those before I am qualified to sigh heavily at the snotty Millennials that fill the hallways and roll through the campus stop signs?

The knowledge that many of my peers have over thirty years of secondary teaching experience or doctorates or families seems suspended long enough for me to derive actual pleasure from hanging out in the corner. There is the IT guy whose phone sounds like the Star Trek (TNG) comm, and the geology professor who yells at the nursing faculty for using the community Xerox machine. Granted, those nursing gals do tend to cause several paper jams.

There are the math professors--all former high school teachers--who tease me over my far too subjective discipline of choice. They tease everyone else, too, so it's no big deal. One has to keep his desk super clean because of an immune deficiency, but he makes it entertaining, writing "No Adjuncts Allowed" or piling furniture in front of the desk to prevent the next English professor from sitting down. The mock battle over territory is a welcome respite from fearing the dull stares of students in the next hour.

There is the political science professor that I could probably talk to for hours on end if we didn't have work to do. And she's Republican. That's how deep I'm in this. I get along with people who I would expect to look at my liberal self with conservative scorn. I'm the only art history nerd in the adjunct corner, yet I fit in.

This fitting in is a very strange sensation, mind you, considering my experiences as a student. Before I stood in front of a whiteboard to earn money, I was an outcast. Now, I imagine we are the cool kids of the faculty. Too cool for our own offices. We can't be bothered to hold regular office hours. Health insurance is so over. Our clique is not impenetrable...full-time staff and tenured faculty are welcome to stop by. I don't even mind seeing students in the grocery store anymore. This is naturally what happens when geeks and nerds become cool.

I'm way too comfortable with this. Where is the angst? Wait, I just remembered I'll never be able to retire. Oh, and my part-time socializing eclipses even my closest relationships that are in dire need of repair. There we go, angst recovered!

Mother's Thoughts II

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 29

Mother’s Day has just passed, and with it, bittersweet memories heightened by the well-wishes of friends to their mothers and all mothers. Now the memories are at the “usual” level. But I find it fitting to turn back to my mother’s thoughts at a moment, late at night, when I am in conflict with my own. Her meticulous handwriting brings comfort, and the sensation of holding a book and paper that she once held helps to shake off some ritual negative thoughts.

I have a library book at my bedside—a quite intriguing book entitled The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain. While Eric Kandel’s work comes recommended both by an national review and by a faculty member in my department, I am truly frustrated that—in between the paragraphs of the preface—my thoughts drift from art and science to the one-liner I saw today in an email from LinkedIn, of all things.

Why You Shouldn’t Go to Grad School.

Seriously? I know the Universe might be a little miffed at me. Lately, I have been reading my Hitchhiker’s Guide, in which the Universe comes across as rather absurd, but to keep tossing this in my face? Really.

I have two main sorrows, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms: the absence of my mother and the loss at a major gamble I call Columbia. So let’s try to figure out the connection between my sorrows and my joy. Because, according to Gibran, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

My rehearsed reaction to the my-MA-is-worthless thought spiral is that I wouldn’t be teaching without it. I wouldn’t be able to call myself professor and associate myself with a renowned university. I also wouldn’t have the extra cares such a vocation brings, like wondering why students toss their papers in the trash. I do find joy there, though. I talk and write about art. What could be better? I read about it, think about it in new ways, learn to explain it differently than it was explained to me. Could I do that without the MA and all the (shameful) sorrow?

My mind counters with this: I just saw a post from a former classmate showing her all classy, fashionable, and curatorial. What did I do today? Well, I toted geraniums and verbena in the back of my car for my grandmother and got mad at myself for not being the perfect trim- and window-painter. Provincial, small-potatoes. No need for the MA there.

I do not need anyone to put me in my place. Now, that is something I obtained in graduate school. My delusions of grandeur are safe within my mind, never to be acted upon.

It’s far too soon to come to any worthwhile conclusions about this particular topic. That won’t stop me from trying, but I’m pretty sure I’d have to give it a few more decades and look back on this period in time. The period I interchangeably refer to as rural exile, underemployment, and, perhaps, spiritual grounding.

Where is the delight? I believe I’ve found some in rediscovering a relationship, something impossible without my return to Ohio. I may not be a jet-setting curator, and probably shouldn’t be, but I have begun (tenuously) to imagine a simpler though just as fulfilling future. And despite the conservative talking points, it has been a joy to forge a stronger bond with my father. That is one big use of the word “despite,” though. On that note, I hope I am a better political thinker than the other stereotypical liberals in their ivory towers. I can operate in a conservative, rural world because I was born here, and, at the moment, I have to operate here.

I’m interested in determining which period of time taught me more: the fabulous days of Columbia or the rural exile. And I have successfully exited the thought spiral for tonight.

purpose

Movies that most people wouldn’t waste their time on are one of my few vices. The others include Coca Cola and sleeping in. So, if you needed further proof of my lack of wildness, there you are. One of those movies is Ever After, and I bring it up only because one line has been repeating in my head for a few months now: “I used to think, if I cared at all, I would have to care about everything...and I’d go stark raving mad.”

That is rather like how I feel right now. Maybe not the stark raving mad part, but the anxiety about finding a “purpose.” I’ve been honing in on something to do with my own journey beyond southeast Ohio and back again, but that makes me wonder if I should keep piling on the purposefulness. Do I care about poverty? Hunger? Child abuse prevention? Sure. I wish I could solve it all.

I have trouble letting go. In effect, I let go of the Heifer Project for some complicated and silly reasons that no one has thus far directly asked me about. I completed a term in AmeriCorps, but chose not to pursue another. In all fairness, that decision came at the same time I was asked to add a second art history class to my schedule. The field I obtained two degrees in of course takes precedence. So letting go feels good. It’s a relief, in many ways, but it is also...sad isn’t the proper word. Bitter is too strong. Disappointing, perhaps?

One of the major criticisms of my generation—and the next one—is that we’re wayward. We flit from job to job, from interest to interest. But isn’t that a more natural way to live? Apart from the nuts and bolts of it all: eating, sleeping, socializing; can one really dedicate their lives to one thing, or one realm of things, and stick to it? Maybe not in this job market. One of the few good things about my crooked path is where I am right now, teaching. It’s growing on me. That’s not to say I’ll be a professor from now until the end. But I’ve found a realm I’d like to stay in/near/vaguely adjacent to.

That realm is difficult to define. Not simply “the arts,” not just “academia.” I want to be involved in the literacy movement as well as art history. I want to keep trying to broaden the views of people who have never seen the value in looking beyond Ohio’s borders. Or even the county’s. I’ve already let this drive me a little crazy, taking it personally when one student or another doesn’t see the value and might never see it. That’s the caring about everything, or everyone, part.

But, did you read up there, “I want to be,” not “I am”? I still feel like I am in flux. Not settled. Not like I’ve found my place. At what point do I become just a talker and not a doer. Am I already there? Looking back on the past three years, I wonder why I haven’t already reached maximum purposefulness. Yet while I say I’m in flux, am I really where I am meant to be? Where is the line between passion and waywardness? Because I seem to be dancing on it.