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Today as I sipped a mug of hot chocolate designed to get me through the next few hours of painstaking research, the back of my mind was also planning for the next teaching day. And I suddenly remembered --or realized really-- how beautiful and simple and pleasant the good old days were. They were the days where I got to be one of the students lazing in a desk rather than the one dancing around in front of the classroom saying interesting things.
All I had to do was show up and sit there with a pencil in my hand, while knowledge was bestowed upon me by some kind of expert. It never mattered what I was wearing, or how much energy I had, or even whether my brain was switched on, because I could just sit there.
And when there was homework, it usually involved reading a book. Just reading it! Not trying to situate that book into some greater historiographical landscape, or extract key arguments to engage with on a deep and laborious level. Not raking carefully through copious footnotes. Not building a reading list from said footnotes that stretches out before me like a Kansas highway.
Or, if there was studying to be done, all I had to do was memorize some interesting stuff that someone told me!
And if I had to write a paper, it was ten pages max. Ten pages! And it didn't have to be some earth-shaking, revolutionary idea. Just a collection of facts, really. Read a couple books, summarize them in 10 pages.
My apologies, good old days. You were so kind to me, and I appreciated you so little. And now alas! you are lost forever! I raise my mug to you, and bid you my fondest, most loving farewell.
Good thing I get a hot chocolate out of it.
5 comments:
Oh....the good ol' days! =) Love ya !
Although the word 'amen' literally implies agreement in nearly every language in the world, it still does not quite capture the depth with which I wholeheartedly agree with this post. Sometimes I miss my student days so much that if I could travel in time, I would find my former self, punch him in the face and say, "How dare you not revel in the experience you are having! Now go do your homework."
I love this post, Katie. When I was in college I thought my life was so hard...then I got a job--teaching, of course.
The days of sitting in a desk absorbing and processing were over. The days of inspiring and sparking had just begun. And now that I do neither, they've all turned into "the good old days!"
So Katie, maybe you should expect your future retired self to come to your door soon and punch you in the face.
I dunno, I keep thinking things like this, and then I see my kids going through it. And I think--wow, I would so NOT trade for the days when "I don't want to be your friend anymore because you don't like Pokemon" or "My mom forgot to pack me a lunch and now I will cry my way through the first 20 minutes of recess" or "I left my ice-cream money on the table and now I'm the only one at lunch without a popsicle" was my lot.
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