Attention, class

May 9, 2009

Well, there won’t be any last-minute jobs appearing to keep me from my appointed rounds as a graduate student. The employment cavalry won't be riding over the hill sounding its job bugle. Classes formally begin Monday but my English 216 class came up on the Internet on Friday, so I did the first week’s assignment. I read Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and answered the eight essay questions that followed. It took about five hours. So I'm off and running with schoolwork.

It was strange indeed to be doing coursework in my home.

“It’s what you always wished for,” the Blessed Wife said to me, "to work out of our home.”

That is true. I could learn to enjoy working and studying out of the home, but it’s just strange at first. Everyone shuffles off the street in the morning to their little widget-production jobs and there I am still hanging with the retirees and career homemakers. It takes some getting used to.

My eight-hour education class meets on Monday. Part of me wants to ditch this whole undertaking, part of me just wants to return to my drone job at the newspaper and part of me is excited about returning to the classroom, in effect turning back the hands of time. It’ll be like going back to the 1970s, only with a lot less hair.

I continue to network for future jobs and for possible shots at student teaching in the Williamsville School District. In my best moments, I tell myself to go for the gold, to shoot for teaching at one of the best school districts in Western New York. I have to heed everyone’s advice: Stay focused and get completely immersed in school. Don’t look back, only to what lies ahead. Believe me, I want to heed that advice, but Mr. Ego keeps telling me that I am the family breadwinner and have to generate cash for the cause. Go away for a while, Mr. Ego. OK?

Going back to school is very enlightening. I’m reading Jose Saramago, for instance. I relearned the difference between a metaphor and a simile. I read Franz Kafka. I was never exposed to this at Syracuse University. What the heck was going on in higher education 30 years ago?

Meanwhile, most of the family is at Chautauqua for Mother's Day, which is tomorrow. It was a pretty enjoyable reunion except for the 60 mph winds howling through the area. The children chastised me for being money-centric, but they don't know that Mr. Ego wants to think that way and finds it difficult to stop that monkey mind.

At this point, there’s nothing more to do than put my fate in the hands of the Lord. I learned that as a child as part of my Catholic upbringing and now find myself returning to that premise. Or is it just a convenient crutch? I don’t think so. I have to believe the universal mind, God, Buddha, or whatever you want to refer to as the supreme being has some plans for me. I just need help to show me the way.

I remember sitting around in January and February, mulling the buyout offer from my former employer and thinking that the easy thing to do would be to stay at the newspaper and continue to work in a pretty difficult environment amid a lot of unhappy people. The hard choice, I thought, would be to take the buyout, go back to school and reinvent myself. Well, hello, hard choice. Time to put up or shut up. This hasn’t been easy and it won’t be for the next 12 to 15 months. I have to learn to enjoy the ride, as scary as it may be.

In the words of my daughters, I’ll just have to “power through it.”