With summer term at an end and grades due by noon tomorrow, a sudden realization washes over me. The last few nights, I have arrived at my domicile several hours in advance of my normal arrival time since I no longer have class at night to attend. Within an hour of arriving, I fall asleep for several hours. For the past two months, I noticed I was very tired all day long, but now that I do not have to be awake until 9PM to lecture or monitor in lab, my body is allowing itself to crash once I arrive in a safe place even though it's not yet bedtime.
People go into education for many reasons, some of which are only tangentially related to education. Many of the professors I know teach because they must rather than because they enjoy it, whether for the paycheck or lab space or because it shows up in their contracts. In fact, most of my colleagues have been leaving early or working strange hours lately doing whatever they like such that the planetarium coordinator commented to me Monday that she sees me more than the people who have office space close to her. I am here because this is what I enjoy.
Apparently it keeps me going. Having students gives me purpose. While most of them appear suddenly out of the ether in my classroom and disapparate fifteen weeks later just as hurriedly never to appear again, they are the thing for which I live. Like the hero of my youth, Mr. Holland, they are my opus. They are my life's work. I do not see what they make of what I teach them, and maybe they forget the lessons or where they learned them, but my mark on the world is in what they choose to do with theirs. Unlike Mr. Holland, I don't have a son. They are my legacy.
Now that I don't have them, at least for the break between terms, I find that I don't last very long after I arrive home from work. Thursday, Friday, Monday, and this evening, I have crashed shortly after finishing up the errands and feeding myself only to wake just before bedtime as I have today. I don't have energy for anything else. All that I have was transferred into daily efforts to inculcate something of value in them. I am losing my life as it were for them.
In some ways this could be a blessing. Knowing myself as I do, if I were awake, I would probably eat or worry about things I can't control or try to find a logical solution to things that are irrational. Rather than do that, my body has allowed my brain to rest instead. I don't need the entire summer as a break, but I have been teaching without interruptions of more than two weeks or so for years. Consequently, I should probably take next summer off, not only to prevent myself from a burnout but also to rest myself for what may come. That's too long of a span for me to use the time wisely, and so I have not opted to do so yet, but I didn't take a summer trip this year to any place, and now the window has passed. At least in class I'm not alone.
As long as I have students, I have something that keeps me going. Some of them can attest to having seen me when I am at my limit, because by the time we get out at night I've been working for 12 hours. Knowing they needed me and desiring to do the best I could with what I have at all times, I set myself to the wheel and pushed forward to the goals. It gave me a reason to care. It gave me a reason to act. Now that I don't have that, when the urgent and important has been achieved, my body has decided it is just going to crash. May God grant that I will always be able to find purpose even in that day when I no longer have students.
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