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