There is but one week remaining in the semester. And I have but one class left to teach, on Tuesday, before my teaching career as a GTA comes to an end. One week from today, the semester ends -- Friday, the 10th is the campus-wide "study day," during which no classes are held, and finals week starts the next day (yes, there are Saturday finals at my university; some of my students have to take them).
This sort of realization, in the midst of everything else going on right now, is bittersweet -- I love teaching. I really do. It's all I've known of life for the past three years, and now, suddenly, I'm at my last class for the foreseeable future. I don't know if I'll be teaching in the fall. Hell, I don't know if I'll teach ever again after Tuesday. The future is one large, unknown expanse ahead of me with little reassurance about what may happen at this point. There are givens, of course; I will have to get some job in order to pay the bills and keep surviving, for example -- but the realization that this may be the last time I ever teach a class is rather humbling and sort of sad. While I am glad that I have finished my degree and will be moving on in life, it will be somewhat frustrating knowing that I may not continually have a classroom full of students to enthrall, enlighten, and command. I tell my students what to do, and they do it. That gives me a sort of power that I've seen many professors abuse, yet I never have. My students respect me, they look up to me, they come to me for guidance. I can't even get my cats to do what I tell them to do most of the time. As I've mentioned before, I take a lot of pride in my work -- I feel, and have always felt, like I am making a difference in my students' lives. And to some extent that has always made up for the rather shitty pay, the student loans I have to live on, and the long, slogging hours through the work I had to accomplish to earn my Master's degree.
And yet, like so many others who have gone before me, I will become another faceless name mentioned or talked about less and less frequently, for a semester or three, before my name is never uttered again within the department -- and even my former students forget I was there. I know this; I've seen this. Even the best professors and GTAs our department has ever had fade away once they graduate, retire, or otherwise move on. They're mentioned from time to time, briefly if that, and after a while, the generations move through year after year, and soon no one has known us but the administration -- who also gets a fresh crop of students every fall, and even the most memorable ones fade from memory after a few years.
Does it matter to me in the long run? I don't know. I know there are a few people who I've made lasting impressions on, for better or for worse, but to dwell on it more than that seems narcissistic or self-centered.
And, after all, nobody said a graduate degree in English -- any field of English -- would guarantee any of us success.
It's just a bit disheartening, that's all. I know I may very well be in the department -- perhaps even in the same office -- next fall as an adjunct, if I'm needed. I also know that I may be somewhere completely different, doing something that right now, I can't even comprehend because I just don't know. As far as I know, my last departmental paycheck is May 24th. That's a week after graduation. I will more than likely use the entirety of that check to pay my rent for June, leaving my savings, tax return, and any graduation money I get to live on for the summer and/or fall months (if necessary). I'm not poor; I've saved my money well this semester, even with my grocery shopping and ordering stuff from Amazon on occasion. I will be able to live comfortably -- even more so once I don't have to put $30-40 of gas in the car every week.
All around me, my friends who aren't graduating this semester are busied with their end-of-semester work, and I don't/can't blame them; up until this semester, I was always swamped myself during this time. Frequently, the department has become more of a ghost town during the mornings when I'm there, and I barely even see anyone when I'm there in the afternoons for short periods of time, aside from maybe a stop-in at a colleague's office for a few moments. All schedules clash with mine now -- I was lucky to see Rae and Jay on Tuesday, as I usually don't, and I am thankful I get to hang out with Parker for a bit on most mornings when I'm there. I am like a ghost in the night; in and out on my own hours, working at my own tempo, moving to the beat of my own proverbial drum. I don't expect a big turnout, if a turnout at all, for the City-wide Garage Sale get-together on Saturday. I've already made the decision that if nobody comes, I'll go it alone -- at least through parts of the town, anyhow. Maybe I'll be able to find something good. Maybe not. But it'll get me out of the house, even if it's in the 40s and possibly rainy (read: the forecast for Saturday).
The weather people weren't lying about the shitty weather today, either -- when I got up this morning, there was ice in the grass and it was pouring rain. When I left Newton to drive to campus, that rain had turned over to ice again -- little shards of wet ice that were collecting on everything. A quarter of the way to Wichita, it was rain again. By the time I taught my first class at 9:30, ice and strong winds again. By the time I taught my 11AM class? Snow. Big, big snowflakes.
I will remind you, yet again, that it is Thursday, May 2.
None of it stuck, of course; it was 73 here yesterday before the temperature began dropping, and it was 85 on Monday and Tuesday. It's not like it was going to stick around. Still, basically everywhere north/east/west of here got hammered pretty strongly; Daisy told me that there's a few inches in Omaha, something like that. Photos from Kansas City show that everything there is snow-covered. So, we got off light here. But still. Snow. In May. May. Climate change in action, folks.
I told my students this morning that if this means we'll get a summer where it's not 110-115 degrees every day, I'll take it. Fuck, it could snow every other day all summer if it wants to; I'll so take that over sweating out of every pore and paying $200 a month electric bills just to run my central air in the mornings and overnights to avoid heat-induced death.
I have now had three students request an alternate, make-up final exam for my class; two have already taken the exam, and the third will take it tomorrow afternoon. It is now past the date of no return -- my students can no longer schedule an early make-up exam, and no make-up exams are given after the actual exam takes place, mainly because I am getting the fuck off of campus and up to Omaha after I graduate. Again, Suri and I partnered up to grade the exams because we both possess a similar mindset about them -- get them graded, get them turned in, get the grades posted. ASAP. That day, if possible. I have always done my best to get all of the exams graded and turned in before the office closes on the exam day. Only once have I been forced to wait an extra day or two to finish everything. Waiting any longer than I have to rubs me the wrong way.
I'm not a patient person.
Because of the way the rest of the semester is set up, I only have to be on campus three more days over the entirety of the month of May -- Tuesday (for my last classes), Monday the 13th (exam day) and Friday the 17th (graduation day). And then I'm done. Again, this isn't something I fully realized until tonight. I have a ton of stuff in my office that needs to be dismantled/taken down/cleaned out; I'm guessing the bulk of that will occur on the morning of the exam, when I'll be the only one in the department for hours. We haven't been told anything about the exam rooms, either, much less what they call the "Finals Feast," a Pizza Hut-catered luncheon for all of us grad students an hour before the exams are given. This happens every semester, and as all of us are grad students, we so don't pass up free food when it's offered. There hasn't been a word about it thus far, which is a bit of cause for concern on all fronts. I'll probably be packing up the office on the 13th, but Daisy will help me move the bulk of it out on graduation day -- since I'd rather not move anything I don't have to all by my lonesome (read: there's a lot of shit I've accumulated in my office over the past three years there). The end of the semester rears its ugly head, and that head is the swath of stuff that I've heretofore neglected to do.
The best part of the end of any given year, though, is that the graduates tend to get rid of almost anything in their offices/department that they don't want, can't take with them, or just plain don't have room for in their homes/cars/etc. I've seen massive stereo systems and televisions sitting in the department lobby with "free to a good home" signs on them, along with books, CDs, sometimes used computers or other electronics, etc. The department becomes a swap meet, except nothing is swapped -- it's all "please, just take it, I can't move it." Now, this time around, I'll be the one with an abundance of stuff to give away -- mostly books and posters, and a big bag of Powerbars and granola bars. Yeah, I could take those home, but eh. Let someone who needs them have them. I also have three or four PlayStation 1 games, an extra controller, a set of speakers, a CD player, an extra set of work clothes, a huge box of teabags, and other odds and ends that I have to get out of that office as well. So many things. Maybe it will be a swap meet after all; get rid of some of my stuff, take some other unwanted stuff. Who knows.
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