I'm a teacher

I used to think that teaching was my calling. I used to walk out of the classroom thinking: "This is what I'm supposed to be doing." Getting excited that students' minds were changing, thinking through complex questions, etc. felt important and challenging. I realize I am on a stage to be evaluated just as it is my job to evaluate them. And just as students feel demoralized from a bad evaluation, I too feel frustrated when I am told that my work is sub-par. 

I know that everyone is not going to like what I have to say. I understand that 75% are there out of obligation and see this as a transaction on their future. I hate that I lose my cool with students when they act like children but expect to be treated like adults or like those who tell me, "Well why do black people get to call me a cracker but I don't get to call them a n*gger?" But there are so many aspects to this job that I am just plain sick of that I'm seriously evaluating whether or not I want to continue after I am done my PhD. Every year, grading tests and papers gets harder for me (it's so tedious). Every year, watching students fuck around on gchat, twitter and facebook while in the classroom makes me wretch and die inside a little more. Each time I see masses of people completely unmoved by and unconvinced of ongoing injustice in the world, I want to weep. Each time I hear a student complain that I don't post my lecture notes on the internet I want to strangle. Every time I'm called "opinionated" while a male colleague is called "passionate" or he "tells it like it is" I want to scream. Each year I find all of this more difficult to shake off. 

Get a Job!

I get incredibly frustrated with the common - and frankly weird - reaction to people who protest: "Get a job!" There are several assumptions that underly this reaction that upset/irritate/sadden me.

First, most people who are protesting for better life conditions - either on their own behalf or as conscious constituents - *do* have jobs. In fact, so many are overworked and struggling to engage in movement activity. Many sacrifice a lot in the name of social justice. I just want to clear that up to the random assholes who yell at protesters most of whom surely follow this blog.

Second, the assumption is that there are plenty of jobs available. This shows a profound disconnection from the realities of the job market. There's the "McDonalds is always hiring" or somesuch. I can't be sure but those who say this are likely people that are fully employed and have somewhat satisfying career tracks. They often harken not their own bootstrap experience but their parents or grandparents - "My ___________ worked 80 hours a week in order to put food on the table and care for their 3 kids. They never complained... blah blah blah."* This statement leads me to my third point.

Third, working 80 hours a week and not being around to raise your kids or have leisure time is the best we can do? Is that the only kind of society we can hope for? Underneath a lot of the rhetoric is an implicit support for a failing status quo and a PROFOUND lack of imagination. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Stephen Duncombe in his book about zines. He writes,

...the powers that be do not sustain their legitimacy by convincing people that the current system is The Answer. That fiction would be too difficult to sustain in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. What they must do, and what they have done very effectively, is convince the mass of people that there is no alternative.

I see this failure of imagination when I teach. When I pour my heart out to students when we learn Marx - that Marx was in awe of capitalist production for its tremendous productive capabilities, that these mechanisms can free us from toil rather than enslave us. For a moment, maybe 5 people get it. But "reality" sets back in, for all of us really, and we go on.

All in all, I think we can demand more. It's possible and it's not wimpy to want more time with our families, our friends, cooking *real* food, relaxing, caring for our neighbors. We don't need to exhaust ourselves making others very rich. To me, it's that simple.

*I fully realize that the idea that a career as a measure of self worth is a "first world" notion and that many people work many hours for little return. I will get to that in a moment.

I'm backish

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Ordinarily, I post when I have some time to ruminate. I have some half finished and largely forgotten posts – about the Occupy Movements, about household decision-making, about animals. By the time I revisited them, the fervor that led me to write about them had diminished and there they sat.

I’m doing pretty well in Baltimore. I feel engaged. There’s no shortage of movement work, PhDing, pets, stray cats, teaching, and socializing. Most times I have to actively say no to the awesome events and leisure activities in order to take a breath.

Problem is, I’m too busy. The weird thing about doing schoolwork in Toronto was that I had time to sit with my ideas. I let the ideas breathe. Paradoxically, having that much space felt isolating and depressing. I actually enjoy the momentum but I know it's detrimental to my progress as a PhD candidate.

I've purposefully downshifted for April (at least a little). Hopefully that will allow me some space for reflection - both academically and politically. I'm currently reading a lot about the environment and I'm really concerned about the lack of political momentum in the U.S. in this regard. This is topped off with these incessant attacks on women's bodies in really fundamental ways around rights that I (sadly? stupidly?) took for granted. It makes me think about how social movements solidify gains. The state as mechanism to do so is such a tenuous entity.

While I'm happy overall, I do feel a little uneasy about the state of things writ-large.