Quitting?

I will never cease to brag that my girlfriend, Catherine, began a Ph.D. program in film and gender studies at Northwestern University this fall, and even after a few weeks it is embarrassingly apparent to me that I’m falling behind the intellectual curve even having caught up my Latin by teaching it and forcing myself to continue reviewing the Great Books canon on my own. But the more practical life is what worries me; instead of cooking a nice squash-spaghetti with homemade tomato/garlic sauce on a particular weeknight and going to bed at a decent hour, fast food and late nights rule the day, because I’m not accountable to anyone but myself and it’s all too easy to justify the expedient life when opposed to the moderate one. By God, if I want to eat a Crunchwrap Supreme, chainsmoke, and stay up until 1 in the morning watching TiVo-ed Daily Shows I’m going to do it. It’s difficult to kick the bad habits when my proactive attitude towards teaching and newfound work ethic (giving up free periods to teach AP Latin, coaching the Quiz Bowl team, regular after school tutoring, four preps with no more free periods, not to mention keeping up with my own reading and graduate school applications) lead me to feel self-righteous and like I deserve somehow my bad habits. Last night, however I finally had enough.

I forsook my usual nap after dinner so that I could crash early, to the tune of 8 p.m. What a glorious feeling it is to free oneself from all care but the desire to go to sleep for a stupid number of hours! I awoke this morning refreshed and energized, ready to teach the bejesus out of my students. Unfortunately, it’s PSAT day and consequently senior skip day as well.

And so I have no first block to hold because of these under-the-radar logistics, I’m fairly caught up with my grading, and all my graduate school and GRE material is at home. I have precious little to do that I am able to do, so I’m taking a cue from Molina and taking the time to caress my little space of the internet that has been all too neglected with short, perfunctory updates even if I’m not as witty a writer as he. But I do have a little teacher-y something to share.

I made several phone calls home this morning, which I typically don’t do because I don’t need to – I only have a precious few trouble children and a number of well-behaved and/or bright students that would be the envy of most teachers. So I decided to call a few parents of students who may not have the best grade but are really demonstrating a certain maturity and effort. Four phone calls along these lines lasted a good hour and a half this morning – the parents were elated that I took the time to call and say I was proud of their children because they typically only receive negative phone calls if at all. One mother began to cry, and I desperately wished she wouldn’t simply because I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to say after that to calm her down. One father launched into a whole “no-thank-you-Mr.-Jones” speech because unbeknownst to me his son loves my class and admires me above all his other teachers. Quite flattering in the moment, but humility is my favorite virtue even if I’m not entirely inclined towards it. All in all, a rewarding morning.

And now to tackle the assigned blogs chosen by the first years. (I hope the first years dictating assigned blogs to the second years routine sticks, by the way, because the questions posed are much more interesting than most we’ve had so far.)

How have I changed since being in Mississippi? Entirely and not at all. I am still optimistic but cynical and self-deprecating, I still wear my Catholic guilt about everything on my sleeve while convincing myself that I’m actually laid back, etc. But the countenance tells all – when I was a freshmen in high school, I looked the part of a middle schooler, when a freshmen in college a high school, when a freshman in Teacher Corps a college boy, but any picture taken of me in the last year demonstrates that I’ve grown up fast. I don’t know what that implies – am I now more of a man than a boy? – but I’m becoming a working stiff while attempting to ward off being a working stiff. Is that what growing up entails? Is that what makes me look many years older than I did just one year ago? I don’t know, but it is worth further reflection…

Did I ever think of quitting? Of course I did, everyone does There are good reasons for quitting – Ary is an excellent example, though Ben will never admit as much – but in my case there was no good reason for quitting. What would I do? What would it prove? From what would I be freeing myself? What would I gain? Although I believe quitting is not necessarily a failure, for me it would have been. It’s that Catholic guilt again and somewhat paradoxically my simultaneous pride; my life as a member of the Teacher Corps community professionally and personally is worth much more I decided than the prevarication of the insane stress and low pay. Call it cost and reward or risk and reward or whatever you will. (I am not a romantic on this point.) I signed up for it, and I’m obligated to do it. I’ve bought into the system, in other words. Maybe rather than dubiously ask myself what I am both gaining and giving by being a member of the Teacher Corps in the first place, I ask instead what I would be gaining and giving without the Teacher Corps. In my case, the answer to the latter is not as much, though I can’t help but point out here again that in someone like Ary’s case the answer is a whole lot.

What do I think about Mississippi? On the one hand, many people here are well-educated and work for the greater common good, but on the other, even more people here are steeped in tradition and accepting the way things are, even justifying them when called on to do so. One of my favorite welcome to Mississippi moments was when I had to kick the Gideons off Murrah’s campus for distributing copies of the New Testament at the front door to everyone who walked by. The principal was not aware of it – in his defense, he arrives at about five in the morning to take care of all the bureaucratic crap he needs to take of so that he can be a more hands on leader during the day when he can pop out a few hours later – and nobody thought to question it apparently. The teachers I spoke to simply did not want to disrespect a religious group, which is of course the wrong paradigm to employ in this case if anyone had truly thought about the larger issues stake, and this is an indicative microcosm in general for Mississippi. Another moment arrived unexpectedly when I was speaking with an advanced English teacher, quite the well-educated, friendly, sharp, and grandmotherly figure in our school, when she told me I just “had” to get married. We were speaking of Catherine, actually, and I was speaking innocently enough of moving back in with her at some point but that we had no plans to get married. But I just “had” to get married, a young man like myself. Never mind the love and devotion we share independently of that. I “had” to get married. This statement and overarching attitude came as a surprise to me, since this woman truly is among the best educated here, having taught at the college level, and surely should have appreciated a different attitude towards life and the institution, especially since there is no moral discrepancy in my case without the institution. And I look around me and see a proportionately large number of young male teachers who are all married and have kids. It’s eerie. Christian marriage and raising children is a fact of life here, and I can’t help but see all these struggling people following the letter of the law but not the spirit and feel a certain disdain if not for the individual the system that produces such individuals.

Is Mississippi all bad? Certainly not. Do I dislike the majority of Mississippians? Absolutely not. I don’t know how this complacency and general lack of critical thinking has pervaded the culture so thoroughly – religion? racism? – but it has, and that’s what I hate. Nobody wants to admit that that’s the problem, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps becoming a “meta-complacency,” that is, a complacency with complacency.

Well, there you go, whoever might read this, some scattered and superficial musings as the wasted school day creeps forwards. Somebody throw me a bone with the quitting thing – I’m hesitant with it simply because I don’t appreciate the negative stigma often attached to the word and another Disney-style overcoming the odds story is more harmful to a conversation about it than beneficial.