Grandpas and Grandmas

I have been blessed to have three sets of them. When I was little I thought of it as an advantage mainly from a Christmas presents and holiday gift/card standpoint. But now, I have been able to see beyond the material advantages which come from having three sets of grandparents, and view the relational and wisdom gleaning aspects as well. What follows is a sort of short form tribute to my grandparents. To my grandparents, I apologize for its deficiencies, inaccuracies, or limits to my understanding and knowledge of you. While my account falls far short of capturing your true selves, it is my best effort to honor you all.

Fred

He lived the closest and I see him the most. He plays golf and polishes his cars and paints his house and writes lists and talks about the old days. I help him with his computer and phone and we talk about how things used to be. We get burgers sometimes. He exhibits his love and care by always being there like when my car died and I had to get home, or when I wanted to buy a computer as a freshman and could not drive to the store, or when my friend and I needed an adult for both of us to go see Book of Eli. Full of smiles and seldom a frown, I always enjoy having him around.

Reconstructed Reflections: Going with God and Getting Through Grad School

Before you read 

Hello, first let me say a thing or five about this post. One, it is long sorry but hang with it, Two, read the footnotes they are there for a reason people. Three there are a lot of hyperlinks use them to help understand what is being referenced. Four this is sort of my attempt at postmodern writing so who knows if its any good but I was a blast to work on. Five I would love to hear your comments, spelling corrections, and thoughts in the comments below or on FB or Twitter.

[Adapted, expanded, and updated from an underwhelming attempt at blog writing circa April 10, 2015 while still in the trenches of Grad School.]¹

Aside

Yes, I write overindulgent self reflective nonsense from time to time and post it on my blog that has a pretentious name referencing a quote from my favorite president. Now that that is out in the open...

Introduction

Ten Months ago Ethan entered Grad School “little did he know”² the dire consequences this decision would have on his life in the coming months. In my application to grad school I wrote about how I wanted to teach kids the importance of history and its value as a subject to study. I wrote about how I came from a long line of teachers and would be carrying on the legacy into the third generation of public educators like my father and grandfather before me. Little did he know what it really meant to be a teacher. There was a chasm between my idea and reality of being a teacher.

I had snazzy black rimmed glasses teaching at a high school in the heart of north T-town. I taught engaging lessons full of rigor and authentic tasks. In the evenings and afternoons I would sip coffee and grade papers. In the evenings I would cook dinner, hangout with family and friends and attend concerts and cinema screenings at my favorite movie house. This idea was formed during my high school and undergrad years, not realizing that teaching is some of the most challenging and humbling work out there.

¹The original sections appear this color the revisions and expanded sections are the whitish. This format has been adopted to preserve, as much as possible, of the original tone and feelings that were present when this piece was originally written. The somewhat uneven style which switches from first to third person, stream of consciousness and snarky narration, interspersed with far too many footnotes can be attributed to the radically inconsistent styles my mind adopts while writing and thinking on a regular basis. In the months since writing this original piece my state of mind has radically improved.^a

a. Yes, I did get the idea to include all of the footnotes which you will see in this article from DFW’s use of footnotes in “IJ.” Also you have to manually etid the HTML to properly put in footnotes so I am going to use regular sized number for the rest of the post to save a tone of time. #lovefootnotes

²“I've written papers on little did he know.”  - Professor Jules Hilbert