I Wonder If I've Made a Huge Mistake

It's been a long week. I know that with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, it's technically been a shorter week than the other 51 weeks of the year. That doesn't mean it hasn't felt like a much longer week. I've had fever off and on during the week, a stomach firmly set on revolting against me, and strange muscular twitches in my arms that are probably due to stress. I've been grading a lot of papers and tending to a lot of other tasks.

There are plenty of stressors in my life. I don't feel particularly inclined to list them all here because I don't feel like being bluntly honest about all of them at the moment to anyone that might be reading this. Blunt honesty is incredibly powerful when handled carelessly. Much like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, heedlessly cracking into it at any given time can be incredibly dumb.

 Also incredibly dumb, but also kind of adorable.

One of the biggest sources of stress in my life involves my career. At the moment, I'm neither in a graduate program nor moving towards applying to join one. I hit a crossroads in 2011, after I finished my M.A., and decided to not continue down the road I was on at that time. It wasn't because I was struggling, exhausted, or burned out by the process.

I stopped because I wasn't ready to stay here and do PhD work, which would have involved changing my focus. I wasn't ready to uproot everything and move to a different region of the country for further work in the same subject. There's a variety of reasons for that, not the least of which are the endless stream of spirit-crushing articles warning the uncertain applicant to run screaming in the other direction.

So, I stood pat and signed up to teach a few classes as an adjunct. What was meant to be a short term layover has turned into quite a bit more. I teach eight sections a semester at three different colleges, which nets me a little more than the pay that I would receive if I had landed a job at a large public school district, teaching English to middle schoolers obsessed with Miley Cyrus, making Vines, and each other's farts. That's not what I chose, however. I chose to teach college and professionalize, while networking and building collaborative relationships with colleagues in a variety of positions.

I believed that I could become a much better instructor by committing to this work for a few years. If I didn't earn a position at a smaller school, I could always return to graduate studies with  much more experience and skill in teaching than virtually any other peer. To some extent, I've done that. My evaluation ratings are extremely high, on average. Since graduating in the Spring of 2011, I've taught 41 courses in First Year Composition. That's more than many graduate students teach in their entire journey through graduate school. The workload I once thought was overwhelmingly large now seems attractively moderate and fascinating.

When I tell people how many courses I teach, their reaction is generally dependent on how well they can relate to my circumstances. Most people who don't truly understand academia are proud of me, but think I work too much. Their concern is kind and the pride they express helps me to feel much better about the other two types of reactions. Most colleagues who are near my level on the academic ladder respond with a bizarre mix of revulsion, pity, and morbid curiosity. They read articles about adjuncts in overworked or exploited situations and it's all very abstract until we meet. Then, I'm suddenly the afflicted one in the midst. Debates swirl, not when I'm present of course, about how it shouldn't be that way or how awful my life sounds. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of being bitten in a zombie apocalypse.

Should we offer him a Contingent Faculty contract or bash in his noggin?

The third reaction, which typically comes from those on higher rungs than I, politely reminds me that I constitute an ever-increasing problem. Much like the second set of reactions, why I'm doing this isn't logical, reasonable, or even clear. Unlike the second set of reactions, which are focused on concern for me, the third set are focused on concern about me.

It doesn't feel good to be an embodiment of a problem, nor does it feel good to feel like one's decisions aren't just personally catastrophic, but are also systemically destructive in large enough numbers. At times, when the cacophony of being overly busy dies down long enough for me to hear the doubt-filled whispers in my head, I wonder if I made a huge mistake.

 

Maybe I should have been a magician? They're taken seriously, right?

A few years back, I ran into an old hometown friend while I was walking across the OU campus. We exchanged pleasantries and caught up on what the other had been doing in the eight years since we had last seen each other. I told him I was wrapping up an M.A. in English, which prompted him to hug me and admit that "... if I could do it over, I'd love to get a degree in something impractical like that."

Seriously?

I still won't run up the white flag and admit that it was stupid of me to study literature. I've always been slow to change course when I've clearly gone the wrong way. I'm not even ready to fully admit that about this decision, though. I've met wonderful people, become much better at what I do, and I've legitimately inspired a few disaffected, cynical college students to enjoy the arduous process of essay writing. 

I want to be secure and comfortable as much as anyone does but I'm also not one to be a slave to mammon like so many good people, including some of my best friends, become over the course of their lives. It's more than just some principled stand against greed, though. There's a deeper reason that eliminates my regret.

You see, time and space are unimaginably enormous. So enormous, in fact, that they are immeasurable. Even if you believe that this small planet is the only example of life in the practically infinite universe, you're still dealing with impossibly large numbers. There are some 7.2 billion people alive on the planet, right now. There have been billions before us and billions will come after.

I've written before about the importance of recognizing the perspectives  of others and those same thoughts come back into play here. Each of the countless billions of humans had their own unique perspectives on the world and experienced a life that no one else can ever lay claim to have fully known.

Most people are content to live their lives without recognizing the infinite diversity and the rich, vibrant, and discomforting tapestry woven by humanity's continued existence. We only experience one lifetime, and even if one believes in reincarnation, that next life isn't the same one that passed before. Life is short, rough, overwhelming at times, and incomprehensibly beautiful at others.

For a species endowed with such a deep and insatiable curiosity, it is nothing short of tragic that we spend so many years of our short lives either unable to understand or unable to remember the world around us. We are only allowed such a brief time to take it all in that it seems terribly unjust and cruel. To fill the intervening years with dull, monotonous drudgery is an incredible insult to the limitless possibility available, yet we all do it.

We do it because we recognize, on some level, the intimidating vastness of it all. The universe might have created humans so that it could know itself, but the awareness of the boundlessness of existence is made bitter by how little of it we're capable of sampling in such a short time. We have to work because we have to eat. We have to eat so that we can remain alive. We have to remain alive so that we can pass on life to others, who will in turn have to work to propagate the species. Along the way, we're given the chance to indulge our curiosity, but the never-ending variety paradoxically pushes us to view the world so narrowly that we believe we can comprehend it all at once.

And this is why studying literature is something I do not regret. Humans love to tell stories about ourselves and our experiences and those perspectives are captured in time by our writing. By reading those texts, we're granted access to another level of consciousness that transcends time and circumstance. We're able to hear the invisible man speaking to us on the lower frequencies. We feel the castrated, confused futility in Benjy Compson's wailing, full of sound and fury. We see the poet's consciousness emerge from the endlessly rocking cradle. The unnumbered perspectives into which our minds are transported are as uncountable as the stars in the sky.

 7,036,540... 7,036, 541... 7,036, 542...

In a stolen moment, our experience of the inexhaustible, eternal universe is broadened. We can sample those lives and be moved by them. Without literature, we have only one life, deadened by the dreary realization of its limits and fragility. Literature gives us a weapon against mortality, against having to unlock all of life's mysteries over again, and against the yawning indifference of time to our hopes and desires.

I don't regret studying it. I'm better for it. I could be wealthier had I done something else. I could have less stress or have grabbed hold of a different tiger's tail had I not chosen this. Even without the crowning academic glory of a PhD and a tenured, endowed chair from which to pontificate ex nihilo, the journey was not a waste. I don't feel like a growing problem, a systemic cancer, or an all-around navel-gazing fool, even if that's what the world around me often declares.

Maybe it's time to make a few major changes in my life. It may be time to cut my losses and move on to a new path. Perhaps not. I'm 35 and still uncertain of what lies ahead. What I won't worry about any longer is whether or not I've done something of value while on this path.

Have a good week out there. Read something,  let it carry your mind elsewhere, and be sure to enjoy the trip.