Whenever I am in Winnebago County I always think of this one part of
Sneakers involving Dan Aykroyd's character, Mother. At the end when all the characters are asking for their own dream items courtesy of the CIA/NSA (whose balls they at that moment have on a string), Aykroyd asks for a Winnebago. A really nice one with red leather interior. I like that for some reason. Even though my grandma had a Buick with red leather interior and it always made me feel kind of carsick after a couple of hours.
Anyway, I'm here right now detoxing from an end to school and just hanging out with my boyfriend. It's pretty nice here. Not much goin on, but the area has a great parks system and my dog and I have been taking full advantage of that. On the down side, this involved a snake sighting that I feel was completely unwarranted during my moment of feeling that nature was so full of beautiful energy and power. God, snakes really do scare the living shit out of me. What a big chicken I am.
Anyway, the days lately are filled with a personal mission to try and learn to let myself relax and enjoy things. Days that go by without purpose and something to claim as "done" at the end of the day leave me feeling less than unfulfilled- they make me feel like I'm not worthy of being here. Like I'm wasting my existence and ought to feel poorly as to the quality of my person. I realize this is destructive- to look at life as a series of tasks. So I'm trying to just hang out and watch telly and movies, do a little knitting, do even more smoking, and enjoy the fact that his placehas a balcony and I do not (lucky bastard!).
I'm having deep and upsetting thoughts about my career. Thoughts I try to wrest into what they are, not real fears, but fears that perhaps ought to be telling me something to change either with my project or with my confidence in myself. I won't tell you exactly what the project is- that would be too much identifying info because it's really a very quirky project that no one else would do/has done. My fear is there is a reason for that. But the study of film within the liberal arts disciplines has been something that has mostly been ignored while other "art worlds" (thank you, Howard Becker) have been the subject of many respected scholarly works. I've got a tough road ahead of me and I may spend the summer figuring out where I shouldn't be with my research as opposed to where I should be. But, I think that the former lesson is one that has its subtle differences in what it can teach a young scholar just starting out. And I think it is one that, in a work setting where outcomes are everything, production is all, it is hard to value.
Academics say that they are about the journey of thought when really the best way to get recognition and tenure is always to produce, produce, produce. And if you've ever read an ethnography, say, or even a history text, you'll see that as far as the difficulties and bumps along the way are concerned, being transparent about them is quite taboo. Not that research ought to be confessional, but sometimes I'm not sure that a total dearth of it is the best thing (an exception here goes to Mitch Duneier's
Sidewalk, in which his methods and journey are well documented with a rare sense of honesty and humility).
This leads me to the next thought banging around in my head lately- that of teaching. I had a TAship this year for the first time- last term. I was instructed to be wary- that it wouldn't be easy and it was a necessary evil of graduate life. My experience was absolutely the opposite. I loved my students, and even above all my own classes, the high point of every week was the hour we spent together. Teaching made me feel thrilled and excited. There were hungover days, days when I felt like I just couldn't teach this stuff- did I know enough? What would I do if the conversation petered out? How would I get them excited when I felt so sleepy? But you know, I found that as much as you are to teach them, they teach you too. You just have to be open to it and let it in. They gave me energy when I didn't have any and just seeing them there looking at me made me feel exhilarated. I found a passion for what I study that I had long forgotten- back in the days when declaring your major seemed like an epiphany that would never lose its lustre in your memory.
I was told this term that I spent way too much time on my teaching. That I didn't have to put as much effort into it as I did and that I was wasting my time. I even had a professor (very well respected in our dept) say to all of us that if you ever spend equal or more time on teaching than you do on your own research you are a fool. You are making a grave mistake. ...Now, WASPY language aside, there are many other things wrong with that mindset, in my opinion.
My teaching evaluations came online today and my students all rated me at the highest level. I even got an email from one that made me cry, telling me I had made a difference to her. I cared more about that this term than I did my own grades. This meant more.
Having children is an idea that I really don't care for. It just isn't the thing for me and I know that. But, teaching undergrads feels amazing. And I'm thinking- if this is what feeds my soul, if this is what gives me a feeling of purpose and love for myself, if this is what allows me to feel like I'm giving something to the world, then maybe this is what needs to be a bigger focus of mine in the overall picture. I want to leave a legacy- to move through life making things I touch better. At the very least, as I've said, not damaging things more, but I'd like to go beyond that. And maybe teaching is a way I can enact that.
I will accept that perhaps I got lucky this time- my class was highly intelligent and very dedicated. Next time I may not be so lucky and may get a class with some more resistant minds, kids less enthusiastic for this experience. However, I won't accept that my feelings weren't real. That teaching didn't do something to me. I think, have always thought, that when things are horrible and touch you in a way that feels like they're searing into your soul, that same thing has the power to do something equally as healing and extraordinarily beautiful. That was the way I dealt with a lot of abuse in my life. If love hurts this much, it's got to feel as intensely good. All I had back then was my faith in that, and eventually, I found love in the world.
Perhaps it will be the same with teaching. But I think I like the challenge and the chance it provides to make something good happen. Something good that I can feel. And really that's all I want to have with me when I go to bed at night. And when I'm an old lady smoking lucky strikes and drinking highballs on a porch somewhere.
I have a fantasy that if I really make an impact on my students, someday some of them will show up at my funeral. They'll all be kind of bunched together standing up. Someone will be saying some words- but you know, not just talking about me or whatever, they'll be
saying some words which is a special funeral thing that means a shitstorm of platitudes that in general are vague and somewhat untrue. And then when that's over, one of my students- someone in the middle of the small group whose face is hidden by others, who can only be identified as wearing a black trench coat, will produce a large boombox on high. He will hold it aloft above his head and the heads of all the others, and suddenly, one will hear the opening chords of AC/DC's TNT. The song will swell around the cemetery as stuffier colleagues and ex colleagues of mine appear scandalized. But the students will stare straight ahead with a resolve behind their eyes. I allow for a slight bobbing of the head to occur during this episode on the part of listeners, but no air guitar, please. Then, as the song winds down the crowd begins to disperse. The students linger on, staring at my lowered casket. Then they pop out a mixtape of the boombox. One side says "Headbanger's Ball: A remembrance of things past" and the other merely says, "Bob."
I guess this is a weird little fantasy to have, but I think we all have little fanciful thoughts about what our funerals will involve. See
High Fidelity for one funny example of this. But of course in the end, I'd like to think I would have made enough of an impression on people I met for them to do something I would like at my funeral. And I do like mixtapes. Otherwise, all you can hope for is a coffee can and some shit about Vietnam.
