The End of a Semester

I am very grateful for my job. It allows me to make many mistakes with my schedules and course plans, feel dread at the prospect of seeing certain faces in my classes (more than once a week, sometimes), and combat the narrow thoughts of other teachers who make my comments feel like timid dancers in a verbal minefield. These are very rare gifts, and the fact that I am paid for all of these privileges is sugar thrown on honey. A part of me knows that I do not deserve any of it, but I cannot stay away. I need the benefits.

Now that another semester is almost over, I will have to make more mistakes with lesson plans (even the ones I have used before), forget the names of my students until the last weeks of the course, and ponder what I gave up by leaving Japan. Yes, three years of teaching in the land of the rising yen do not just escape one's thoughts. Any teaching that I do now is influenced by what I learned there. It matters.

This is on my mind, of course, because of money. I have saved up some of it to a certain limit in different bank accounts, and there is very little reason for me to stay where I am. Teaching has all of the benefits that I have stated, but it is still not enough for me (I have become greedy for more). I need more than just an understanding of how limited my knowledge is. Perhaps another job is out there for me, and I just need to seek it out before signing another contract.

And it is not the money, per se, that I care about. I will not be shy about saying how little I care about money. We are living in a time when people are more embarrassed by not talking about their incomes. Instead, I feel some shyness about how strong and powerful money can be. Spirits lift; greyness grows into colour; the day can seem lighter and more pleasant. And these are serious problems.

No one who wants to create and be remembered for their work should be too comfortable with their circumstances. I never believed that starving in a studio apartment or garret was the best thing for any artist, but I understand the temptation. I have managed to live on handouts and very little income at important moments in my life, and now that fun is over. I am now a respectable adult with an income, money in the bank, a recovering credit rating and the means to move on.

There has to be a waking up to some other identity; something not yet tasted or felt. I have been heading back to the rough drafts and old stories and putting them in some shape on the page, but there must be more.

And why do I feel so different at the end of this particular semester? Well, you should know: Covid-19 is getting back at us; quarantining is driving us up the wall; colleagues and students are becoming ill all around me; and the general unease and discomfort of our age hangs over all of us. All my classes feel like a very intense relationship: there is the initial discovery of who those people are (and they are also learning about me); there are the peaks and valleys to pass through as you decide to continue to be in the other one's orbit (not every relationship on this level manages to continue, believe me); and finally, there is the moment when you realize that it has to end (a set of mixed feelings that can leave both parties confused and wondering just what happened). A much more intense feeling than certain May-December romances, I think.

A part of me knows that I made a deal when I decided to teach at a college. I had the experience of teaching students overseas and I enjoyed the fact that I could continue to do the same work at home with much of the same material. I was also glad that I could go to the school while working as a teacher, and get consistent contracts with one school instead of the usual shuttling between offices and homes. And I was very glad to make the acquaintance of staff, students and teachers who instructed me as much as I could instruct them about myself and my skills and abilities. But there were difficult trade-offs: large stacks of papers to mark and hand back to students who did not always appreciate my hard work; complaints and meetings with staff over those very same students; a very real feeling of being stuck in a hamster wheel of repetition involving coverage of the same ground; and the worst feeling of being unable to see the difference I was making in that world, or in my own life.

A lot to contemplate before the end of another semester...

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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