Choose

I've taken a bit of a hiatus from this blog, and now I'm returning with an uncharacteristically personal post.

I applied to grad school this winter, and most of the schools to which I applied have sent me their verdicts. Most of them are rejections. Despite the PhD path essentially eroding beneath my feet, I have a myriad of chioces in front of me.

This is a strange time, and I'm trying to capture it. Since Jarrod and I set off for Buffalo last Friday afternoon, I have been dwelling with the surreality of making decisions that will significantly impact my future. It is a poltergeist that simply stares at me, waiting for me to choose. I stare back, searching for words to explain myself.

At this time last year, I was so enthusiastic about academia. I had the unfounded confidence of a college senior, still ensconced in the certainty of a few more weeks of undergraduate education. That I would continue my education on the graduate level was an unrefutable truth in my mind.

"What are you doing now?"

That question had followed me for the first two months or so after graduation, and while it was repeated ad nauseum, I had an acceptable answer: "I'm applying to grad school."

"What have you been up to since graduation?" The question re-surfaced in an unlikely place, a movie theater in Worcester. I was there with two friends from college, and we ran into another Assumption graduate. And this time, I didn't have an easy, terse answer. I hadalready applied, and all of the schools I had heard from at that point had rejected me. I couldn't say "grad school," so I said, "Substitute teaching."

"Oh, how do you like it?"
This fellow alumna is a middle school teacher, and we were once in the same pre-practicum education seminar. I quit the concentration after a week and felt liberated, and certain that I would never resort to teaching high school. I would teach college.

"I hate it," I said with a laugh, and absolute sincerity.
It's been a rough school year, with shockingly bad behavior from the students and lack of support from other teachers and administrators.

But I don't hate teaching. I applied for PhD programs because I love literature and I want to teach it. I would still like to teach it to college students who share the same enthusiasm for writing and reading, rather than trying to generate it amongst teenagers in a high school, but it's infinitely better than being trapped in a cubicle, doing work that I find mindless and meaningless. Teaching is an option again. But on my terms this time, not the version of teaching set forth by a college education department or by disconcertingly placid elementary school principals who are horrified that a substitute would dare yell at a group of out-of-control first graders.

There is no path before me; I have to make my own. I am blessed, though, to not have to make it alone, because I have Jarrod. And while I still feel that uncanniness shadowing me, I know that I have the power to create a life that will be fulfilling, challenging, rewarding, and meaninful. A job cannot do that. Grad school cannot do that.

Only I can.