I never meant to be a teacher. True, I grew up around university professors – everybody’s daddy taught college – but it wasn’t something I ever meant to do. Maybe I’d do science research (thus the Botany degree), but I never really thought about teaching.
In August of 1996, my sister and I were backpacking with our younger children in the Oregon Cascades. It rained. It always rained when we camped with those two – maybe that’s why my younger daughter is now an English major. (The older one, the one who hiked in the sunshine, became a botanist.)
As we sat under our tarps and watched the rain, my sister said she’d be starting a Master’s degree that fall – maybe she’d end up teaching. I couldn’t possibly teach, I told her. I wouldn’t know how.
Yet even while I claimed I couldn’t do it, I pictured myself giving this explanation to a class full of students. Gradually, it began to seem possible. And within three weeks, I was signed up for classes at the same university.
But while my sister was able to move from her Bachelor’s to a Master’s degree, my route was less direct. I couldn’t see myself teaching biology, imparting knowledge to an eager class. What I could imagine was something more interactive – teaching writing. I’d worked as a science editor for six years, and I’d always been a voracious reader. What could be more natural than being an English teacher? “I’d like to teach high school English,” I told the admissions officer.
“You need an English degree for that,” she told me. And by the end of September, I was starting a second Bachelor’s degree. I was forty-five years old.
After three years for the BA – where excellent professors urged me to teach at the college level – and another two for a Master’s, I taught locally at two universities and a community college for several years. But while I loved the work, I wasn’t making it financially. And it seemed clear that a part-timer would never be viewed as a “real teacher.”
At the beginning of 2005, I had a revelation: My life wasn’t working. What I needed was a full-time job, a job with enough pay to live on and enough time to write. Even if it meant moving far from home – alone.
That spring, I blanketed the west with resumes. The applications were laborious; I couldn’t write more than two or three each weekend. Consequently, I limited them to colleges where I thought I could actually live. Twenty applications led to five interviews, along with quick visits to the Olympic Mountains, the Rockies, the Sierras, and the desert east of San Diego.
In the end, I was offered one job. After a grueling summer of packing up the house – with a lot of help from family and a friend – I loaded everything into a 26-foot U-Haul and drove to California. I landed at a community college in one of the state’s most impoverished counties… with one of the nation’s finest national parks in my back yard.
Lying by the pool at that first apartment, I looked up past the green leaves and red tiled roofs to brilliant blue sky. “I’ve left it all behind,” I told myself. And for the moment, it seemed enough.
In August of 1996, my sister and I were backpacking with our younger children in the Oregon Cascades. It rained. It always rained when we camped with those two – maybe that’s why my younger daughter is now an English major. (The older one, the one who hiked in the sunshine, became a botanist.)
As we sat under our tarps and watched the rain, my sister said she’d be starting a Master’s degree that fall – maybe she’d end up teaching. I couldn’t possibly teach, I told her. I wouldn’t know how.
Yet even while I claimed I couldn’t do it, I pictured myself giving this explanation to a class full of students. Gradually, it began to seem possible. And within three weeks, I was signed up for classes at the same university.
But while my sister was able to move from her Bachelor’s to a Master’s degree, my route was less direct. I couldn’t see myself teaching biology, imparting knowledge to an eager class. What I could imagine was something more interactive – teaching writing. I’d worked as a science editor for six years, and I’d always been a voracious reader. What could be more natural than being an English teacher? “I’d like to teach high school English,” I told the admissions officer.
“You need an English degree for that,” she told me. And by the end of September, I was starting a second Bachelor’s degree. I was forty-five years old.
After three years for the BA – where excellent professors urged me to teach at the college level – and another two for a Master’s, I taught locally at two universities and a community college for several years. But while I loved the work, I wasn’t making it financially. And it seemed clear that a part-timer would never be viewed as a “real teacher.”
At the beginning of 2005, I had a revelation: My life wasn’t working. What I needed was a full-time job, a job with enough pay to live on and enough time to write. Even if it meant moving far from home – alone.
That spring, I blanketed the west with resumes. The applications were laborious; I couldn’t write more than two or three each weekend. Consequently, I limited them to colleges where I thought I could actually live. Twenty applications led to five interviews, along with quick visits to the Olympic Mountains, the Rockies, the Sierras, and the desert east of San Diego.
In the end, I was offered one job. After a grueling summer of packing up the house – with a lot of help from family and a friend – I loaded everything into a 26-foot U-Haul and drove to California. I landed at a community college in one of the state’s most impoverished counties… with one of the nation’s finest national parks in my back yard.
Lying by the pool at that first apartment, I looked up past the green leaves and red tiled roofs to brilliant blue sky. “I’ve left it all behind,” I told myself. And for the moment, it seemed enough.
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