Back in Action

Dear Dad,

The end of summer was, I’m not going to lie, a little anticlimactic at our house. This whole Mom-is-a-full-time-teacher thing is a whole new world for us. All sorts of things are different. There’s no one to pick up groceries in the middle of the day or make sure the laundry gets put in the dryer right away so that it doesn’t get stinky on hot days sitting in the wash. Calenders are fuller, dinner is later, and the first day of school came after two weeks of getting up and going into school during school hours, only instead of spending the day with me in the library, they actually went to class, which was probably a nice change for them. So it’s been a little bit of a weird week, for all of us. Maybe me most especially.

It’s been a long (long, long) time since I started the first day of school as a teacher. Last year about now I was accidentally signing up for grad school. And for the decade plus before that I was one of the moms dropping kids off with a sigh of mixed relief and anxiety. In fact, the last time I started the school year as a teacher I wasn’t yet a mother. I thought my life was full to the brim then. Little did I know how much crazier it could get.

I didn’t know then that the evenings would be full of extra kids over for dinner and homework and chores and golf lessons and swimming nights and did-anyone-take-out-the-trash/walk-the-dog/remember-to-turn-on-the-crockpot-oh-crap-I-forgot-that-thing-at-school-I-needed-to-do-tonight. (Thank goodness for GoogleDrive) It’s a satisfying kind of busy. I’m tired in that way where your arms feel heavier than normal and your eyes are blurry even with glasses on. But it feels good to be back in the library, to get hugs and notes and hear my favorite question, “Gillian, do you have any ideas for a good book?”

We’re back. School is in. Life is good. And now? A glass of wine and a good night’s sleep.

-Gillian

In School

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We call it “throwing a wrench in” around here. It doesn’t happen often, although often enough that we have a dedicated expression when it does. A game changer. A sudden shift in the plan. Sometimes even an about-face. It throws us into chaos for a while, and then it all settles down into a new normal. I have to remind myself of that, that soon it will be normal. Not the same normal as before, but normal. Right now, well, right now I have only just remembered that it is Thursday,  because where did the week go?

Next week I start a new job. In the midst of a full load of grad school classes, children at two different schools on two different schedules, an ever growing list of afterschool activities that require the kind of ferrying I swore I wouldn’t ever take part in and a part time graduate teaching practicum gig, I am taking over a much neglected library at  a K-8 school. It’s crazy. Utterly crazy. And yet, I can't wait to start.

Our family balance has always been centered on the fact that I am here. Here for sick days and vacation days, late starts, field trips, midday concerts, afterschool conferences. It was a decision we made long ago, and one that has worked well for the 12 plus years that we have been parents.  And while it was always the plan for me to go back to work, that was supposed to be later. After school, after the trial run of this practicum, when we had all (myself included, myself especially!) had time to adjust to the idea of mom being more than just mom.

But fate has a way of throwing that wrench in. And this chance was too perfect to pass up. A library. My library. My own library.  So it’s back to school I go. Twice over. As a student and as a librarian. I have an excellent cheering section. They all seem to think I can do this crazy thing. This full time plus half time plus another half time plus all the other things that need to get done in a day thing.  They will pick up slack, I will let things go, someone will forget and event or an activity or a paper that’s due (it will most likely be me) life will be crazy. And then, after a little while, it will be our new normal. Until the next wrench comes along, of course. 

                                                                                                                       ~Gillian

Back to school again. And again. And again.

By now, I should be used to the first day of school. I have, after all, had 60 of them.

There are few events in life that so mix anticipation with trepidation as the first day of school. In elementary school, I hoped to see friends who summer parted from me, but then I worried that the multiplication tables had changed over the break.

In high school, I was relieved that I wouldn’t be dodging Mom and Dad’s long list of summer chores, but I knew that I was too geek and not enough cool to sit with “the” crowd at lunch.

The rotten trick of college is that you have at least two first days each year. And the more letters you stack behind your name, the more of those first days you face.

As an undergraduate, I sweated that I would somehow so screw up that the draft board would send me an invitation to Mekong Tech. On the other hand, parties were never so memorable as when I was just under the drinking age.

The draft was gone by the time I was a junior. All I had to worry about is whether I would learn enough to actually get a job. But I had a beautiful coed on my arm and could look forward to decades of marital bliss. (That’s one dream that came true).

A sane person would have stopped there – as I did for 17 years. Graduate school has a way of sneaking up to you, though. Doubly so if you put a decade between master’s and doctoral programs.

The first day of term in grad school is a blur. Sometimes you have so many research projects you don’t notice the end of one semester and the beginning of another. You know you are on break, however, when you are franticly scrambling for whatever someone will pay you to make a dent in that tuition bill.

Of course, it’s a crapshoot whether the classes you signed up for will be anything like the titles in the catalog. I signed up for a “cultural studies” seminar to learn about minority audiences. I took a seat next to the guy in a Mao hat to learn how traditional media folk were ruining the world. Traditional Mao-hatless folk like me.

Now I’m a professor who not only faces two first days each year, but dons a cap and gown for two graduations each year. I like the graduation – its harvest time in higher ed. And after each graduation I swear I’m going to update my syllabi right away and have a complete set of PowerPoints ready long before I would see the next wave of students.

Yea, right. I’m a journalist. Skirting the finality of a deadline is in my DNA. The Journalism School is amazingly full of busy professors the weekend before class starts.

But just like in elementary school and my many other first days of school, the stresses of starting over now are more than balanced by the joys that come with them. I love that I’m on the other side of the pressure cooker. While I’m scrambling to prepare assignments, I get to watch the wide-eyed new undergraduates, the mentally-already-graduated seniors and the overwhelmed grad students find their places. And I get to offer advice, assurance and consolation. Because I know:

Been there, done that -- 60 times.                                 -- Clyde