Updates
It has been a stressful, interesting, exciting and typical week. Two particularly Wychian encounters happened, of the sort that seem to happen to me all the time. I will highlight these rather than the other stuff that’s been going on.
Back in April when I came to the U of Chicago for prospective students’ day, I was standing outside the free-food room with a Chinese dude when a young woman walked up wearing none other than a “Philly for Obama” pin. No shit, says I, and initiated a conversation. Turns out said person lived right there in West Philly, but three blocks from the original Greenline, and was working (and I mean working for real) on the Fringe Fest (which I missed this year because of being here). All very interesting, nice girl, etc. We chatted a bit and then remarked that we would certainly run into each other around West Philly, probably at the Greenline, of which I was a frequent patron. I never once saw this girl again, not all summer, not in any mutual company nothing. She was here checking out a program in Latin American studies, and I didn’t even know if she’d decided to come here.
Low and behold, there I am on Tuesday at the massive daylong orientation for new grad students here at the University, and there in the middle of a packed room, who the hell sits right down next to me. Seriously.
Second, as you probably know I was, after college, a mid-level administrator with the Rutgers University division of Student Support Services, a federally-funded program (one of the TRiO programs run by the department of education) for low-income students coming into college. I also taught intro writing courses in the summer program, and generally look back on those days and that job with great fondness. I haven’t seen or kept of with any of the students from the class, although I still talk about them a lot and wonder how they’re all doing. That class was amazing.
So there I am yesterday in Divinity School orientation, eating lunch as they have people from various organizations come and talk to us. A guy gets up there from the LGBTQ group at the school and starts talking, and he looks ridiculously familiar. It was one of my students from SSS and EOF at Rutgers all those years ago! I haven’t seen this guy since he was 18 years old, and I remember him being conflicted deeply about his pentacostal upbringing and his burgeoning understanding of his sexuality. I cannot describe to you how fucking unbeleiveably proud I am that one of my kids, specifically with major academic and financial disadvantages growing up, is now in graduate school in Psychology at the University of Chicago! I also got to catch up with him on two of the other students, one of whom I have told many of you the story of coming into my office and crying her eyes out because she was so worried about her future. I am even more proud to say that that young woman is now in a graduate program in social work at Rutgers. Fuck. Yeah.
A lot of other weird and frustrating things have happened this week. But I’ve got some solid people around here now, and as I get stressed out I am trying to remind myself to think of this amazing news about my students. Seriously, if teaching and seeing your results feels this good even a fraction of the time, I am so goddamn excited to be here.