Forward
Autumn is unclear. Huzzah!
This is my first summer in years to face an autumn that doesn’t include school.
To be honest, it seems odd. And by odd, I mean kind of fabulous.
That’s not to say I didn’t love teaching. Often it felt deeply meaningful. Each academic year had its own vibe, from magical to complicated to occasionally toxic. Each was a unique stew of the students I came to know, my relationship with peers, and the time and place I was in. But along with rewards came burdens, anxieties.
The equation was always skewed in teaching’s favor, but from where I sit now, in the middle of August 2022 with no school year looming on the horizon, what I feel more than anything is calm, as opposed to the simmering dread I’d annually accustomed myself to.
As a kid and as a teaching adult, those back-to-school commercials flipped me out, because they augured the death of my freedom. But now, as an ex-teacher, I find them nothing more than mildly annoying. The way I see it, late summer is simply a temporal extension of midsummer sliding refreshingly into autumn, which promises to be crisp and full of apples.
I reflect on the lovely things being a teacher gave me. Commitment. Meaning. Purpose. An easy answer to the question “what do you do?”
As a writer, I retain all but that last one. My life not as demarcation, but continuum. Blissfully, I don’t know where I’m headed but I can tell you it’s not back to school. It’s not back, at all.