Champing at the Bit

The school calendar has dominated my life for the last twenty years; small changes disturb the pattern. We have an extended summer because of the Texas legislature’s decision to start school as close to September as possible. (Some push from the vacation lobby I never understood). As a result I am at the point in my summer when I am ready to go up to the school and set up my room. This normally happens a couple of weeks before we are to go back. I know, I am only getting antsy a week or so early, so it is not that big of a deal. I just find it interesting how structured and automatic our patterns become over time. Tomorrow I plan on going up to my classroom and setting up the room. They held summer school classes at my school, and my room was used. I had to take down all of my stuff, so tomorrow I will be sticking posters up and arranging desks. They normally give us a day and a half to prep for the beginning of the school year, the rest of the week is taken up by meet and greet activities and rah-rah professional development.

Incremental

there once was a shape
made of wet sand
it doesn't matter what shape
just that it was there
and now it is not
different people in different times
saw different shapes
yet still spoke as if it were
the same shape contiguously
now it is not except it is
more so than previously
because it holds its shape
true to each who speak of it
the past maintains the present
the present invents the past
to better to become itself
together the mean of meaning
is shaped then reshaped again
so much sand in our hands

(summer 2007)

Now What?

I turned in my last test for Ed. Psych earlier today. So now, except for reading ten more adolescent novels, I am through with grad school for the summer. Perhaps for good. While I love the readings and the class discussions, for the most part, I am still caught up in the question I had after my first semester: Why am I doing this? Every semester since I have started this, I go through this same questioning: why am I doing this? Perhaps my inability to come up with an answer is reason enough not to finish. The tests and papers, where I have to perform in order to prove myself, create stress because I am such an over achiever and obsess over my “failures” if I make a B. Then when I make my A, I wonder if I really deserved the grade and criticize the work I did do. What kind of sick psychology is in play there? I feel as if I am missing my children’s adolescence by spending my time reading the reams of articles required for each class. ( I was stunned when someone in class last week admitted to not having read one of the two articles we were supposed to read. This in a relatively light reading load.) It was interesting taking two classes this summer, because it seemed as if I had lots of time because I was not working full time teaching high school. Yet I had more than one classmate looked shocked that I was taking two classes in one summer session. I am acquiring debt at an alarming rate, just as my oldest child is beginning to apply to colleges, none of which are cheap, and all of which I will do whatever I can to help him go to if he gets accepted, which it looks like he will based on their student demographics. I don’t see a lot of benefits to finishing, other than I hate quitting anything. I like the idea of being able to say I am working on a Ph.D., and the idea that I will get one if I continue, but is that just my egotistic vanity that is at stake; my insecurity in my intellectual ability trying to justify itself with yet another piece of paper? One of the four truths of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by desire: perhaps I should rethink my desires? OM.

flux

are you the you you are
when you change how much
of any given time are you
what you are or are becoming

an amoeba absorbs
what it moves through
changing its surroundings
and its self into itself