The end-game in all this student-ing, is that I will be a teacher, God willing and the creeks don't rise. Initially, my goal was to teach middle and/or high schoolers geography stuff. Maybe some history stuff, too. Now, I find myself wanting to teach kids to not be like me. Don't be a 50-year-old college student. Don't think that "getting married and having kids" is a viable life-choice. (I mean, sure, getting married and having kids can be an option, just don't let it be the ONLY option you give yourself.) Don't take a semester off, because it's never just a semester off. Don't sell yourself short, and don't let anybody else sell you short either. And please, for the sake of your future, if anybody encourages you to quit school because it's taking too much of your time from that person, RUN. Run, and never look back.
Right this moment, I'm sitting in a Farmer Boys restaurant, studying between classes while I try to eat something semi-healthy. I can't be in a Farmer Boys without thinking of my Aunt who used to manage one and who recently died of lung cancer. It wasn't a prolonged illness. In fact, it was less than six months from diagnosis to death. She died two days before I entered, kicking and screaming, my 51st year on this planet. It's hard to concentrate on The History of Feminism or The Essentials of Comparative Politics when the winds of mortality are rushing around one's psyche, please believe me. There is a giant chunk of my soul that Yearns (yes, Yearns with a capital Y) to go outside, get as naked as the law allows, and just lay in the sun until it's done shining. Then come inside, and wrap myself in a blanket in front of a fire and read until I fall asleep. Then repeat the process every single day until I die.
But there isn't time. I am already behind in my massive amounts of textbook reading and I have a paper due tomorrow and a test next week and a house to clean and a daughter to feed, clothe, and transport to and fro, and people who rely on me, and, and, and, and....
I don't complain about my obligations to myself or to others. Truly, I don't. I do lament that I lived my life bassackwards, and being a 50-year-old student who is forever mentally kicking her own 20-something ass is the price I must pay. And I'm sure that at the end of my student-ing, I will be very happy for having completed it. But I'm tired. Bone-weary, in fact. This is why I don't say that I have two-and-a-half-years of school left. That's friggin depressing to somebody who is suddenly hyper-aware of every tick of the clock. I have 5 semesters left. No more than the number of digits I have on one hand. That feels better - not so weighty.
Then I can be something else.
