Wednesday 4 May 2011

Emerging


We emerge from our second four-day weekend a little heavier, but perhaps a little lighter as well.  Four days off in glorious weather seems to make the ‘real’ world a little easier to face.  These two weekends were like a mini rebirth for me.  Not in any great world-shifting ways, but in little victories way.  I ran another 5K and didn’t feel like puking at the end. I felt great, actually.  That is a bit world-shifting actually.  The jeans I wore in Africa when I met Pete were my second skin all weekend.  I finally mopped the floor (which was much worse than I thought, embarrassing). I hosted a post-Royal Wedding impromptu party. I finished my job assignment a day early instead of just shy of the deadline.  But most importantly, I applied for a job that I am really excited about, not one that I felt obligated to want. 
The job might be a long shot, but it taught me something.  I found it the same day I got an announcement for two academic jobs.  I have yet to apply for those.  Teaching Geography is a passion of mine, but limiting that teaching and research to fellow geographers, is not.  That’s the thing about academia that I didn’t know when I started on the PhD path.  A lot of academics don’t like teaching undergraduates.  They find their interaction with the students outside the lecture hall, tiresome.  I know.  Shocking.  Don’t get me wrong, there are also a lot (hopefully more) academics that really enjoy teaching, but in the world I found myself , not having to deal with undergraduates is listed as a benefit to a job and having to hold office hours a regrettable necessary evil.  That doesn’t work for me. 
I will leave it there for now.  I don’t want to jinx this application, so I have sent it out there and am hoping for the best, at least an interview.  Chances are good, I think.  My magic 8-ball app tells me that “it is decidedly so.”  It hasn’t been wrong yet.


In other news, Osama bin Laden is dead.  I don’t know how I feel about that.  I can’t really bring myself to celebrate, but I do have a lingering feeling of…I don’t know what.  Ten years we have been at war. Ten years we have thrown the world into turmoil and all it took was an elite military group.  All those lives destroyed and all it took was a secret mission.  I know it is more complicated than that, but it just feels like an anti-climax.  I can’t help but feel that this death isn’t going to do any good in the climate of hate and fear nurtured over these last ten years.  Things have gone too far and got too out of control for this one death to make a difference or bring any sense of ‘justice.’  It definitely doesn’t make me feel lighter.  

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