Working Identities

The halls of a TC building where I must be
a doctoral student

It’s been a while since my last post. To be honest, I haven’t done much besides school work, to the point that the I no longer know what to tell people when they ask me what my hobbies are. Which also means I feel a constant looming pressure of knowing I live in a big city with a reputation for never sleeping yet I spend my weekends holed up in my room or in the library (and the occasional coffee shop).

This is not to say that I spend all of my time doing doctoral work. I have found two outlets in the form of jobs that have enriched this semester in ways that I didn’t expect. One is at a preschool, the other is working at the Graduate Writing Center consulting students working on academic writing projects.

After not working for two years, I had forgotten what it feels like to be part of something that allows for change that you can actually see. Teaching is always rewarding as you watch children grow and marvel at the world before you (the most joy I have ever witnessed was when the preschoolers woke up from their nap to see it snowing heavily, expect perhaps for when they were actually playing in the snow). But at the Graduate Writing Center I watch as (some) people’s faces light up when I give them feedback on their papers. The consultations when this happens are the one time when I feel that maybe, just maybe, I can say I am good at this.

(This isn’t true all of the time. Some days I flail around foolishly just trying to figure out the assignment.)

A project created by one of our reflective 4 year old

When I enter both of these spaces, I get to forget the pressure of having to perform as a doctoral student. I don’t need to think about sounding smart while spouting theoretical frameworks I barely understand. In both of these spaces, the practical is what matters— thinking about the needs of the person, whether they’re a loquacious three-year-old telling me about the snowpeople family on her sweater or a driven graduate student applying for doctoral programs.

In the last paper I wrote for one of my classes, I talked about how learning confined to the classroom stifles who students can become. These two jobs have shown me how true that really is. Because in these spaces, I get to layer new identities on myself that I couldn’t by just being in the doctoral program. I am now a preschool teacher (in training), a writer, a guide. And the result is that in times when it feels like I don’t belong in one, a feeling that has arisen many times over this semester, I know that at least I belong in one of the others.