Though I left high school thinking college would be a breeze, it wasn’t. In the early 1990s the state of Kansas only required two years of math and science, so that’s all I took. My ACT score English got me out of Comp 1, but I wasn’t prepared for the rigors of a college class. The long and winding road to my B.A. in English took seven years.
After college I worked, briefly, as a proofreader for a yellow pages ad agency. I left that job after three months and a major error that resulted in a Chicago business’s phone number being misprinted. I’m pretty sure no one was heartbroken when I sought other employment.
I spent the next year working odd jobs. I was an assistant manager at a Hallmark store for three months before the owner closed it. I scored standardized test essays. But, mostly, I drank too much and wondered what the hell to do with an English degree. Yard later an excellent therapist told me I was likely depressed at that time, and in my first year of college, which led me to make uncharacteristically poor choices.
One May night, just shy of a year after I graduated from college, in the dim light of my boxy Apple desktop computer, I decided to apply to graduate school. The only thing I loved, really loved, was reading and writing. I’d been attending open mics and writing terrible poetry, and all I knew was that school—and the act of being a student—felt right.
I wound up at K-State because they didn’t require reading proficiency in a foreign language, and they offered me a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. I had never taught before, had no idea what I was doing, and spent the first class I ever taught sitting cross legged on the desk in a stifling room above a gymnasium. I was trying to channel Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. That false bravado lasted about two weeks before I re-introduced myself to the class and got down to the business of trying to teach.
When I finished my M.A., with an emphasis in Creative Writing, I took a year to decide which path to pursue next: get my doctorate or a secondary teaching license. I worked in an advising office at KU and saw students every day who weren’t ready for college. They reminded me of myself, and they reminded me of the students I’d taught at K-State who wanted so badly to do well but had arrived with few of the tools they needed to succeed.
The best worst decision I ever made was to get my teaching license. I worked as an adjunct while I did it so that I could keep up my teaching. It was hectic and odd and wonderful. And I’ve loved my years in high school classrooms, and I’m proud of the way I’ve helped literally thousands of students learn how to stand up for themselves and the things they believe in. But, I’m at a point in my career that feels a bit static, and lately I’ve been thinking about returning to the college classroom—to push myself to help those students who’ve made that leap and are ready to work towards their post-secondary goals.
In 2002, I fell into college teaching. I had no experience, absolutely no business standing in front of a classroom. I was inept, barely a day ahead of my students, and more often than not than terrified that I was screwing them up in some irreversible way. Now, with over 20 years experience, multiple publication credits including a chapbook of poems, and several successful conference presentations on the art and craft of teaching, I can’t even get an interview to work as an adjunct.
Think about that.
Or don’t. It might piss you off as much as it does me.
If I’d gotten my doctorate, I likely wouldn’t know Michael and certainly wouldn’t know any of the incredible students who have meant so much to me over the years.
But, tonight, I’m sitting and stewing about a piece of paper that is apparently, according to hiring committees all over the KC metro, a better indicator of value than my twenty years of experience. And sure, I could go back to school and get that piece of paper now if I won the lottery and didn’t need to work full time, but…you know the rest.
Today, 21 years after my first semester in front of a classroom, I’m a great teacher. Seriously. If you have a student, you want them in my class. I’ll give them everything I’ve got and do all I can to make them believe in themselves and in the power of their own voice. I’ll give them every opportunity to excel and show me everything they can do.
I guess, tonight, I’m just wishing someone would do the same for me.
Shannon Carriger 