Raise or Raze?

I had every intention of becoming a ‘blogger’ back when it was cool to be one. But then reality set in: Parenting four kids on top of working full-time and part-time kicked my butt. I completely missed the VLOG boat too (but I understand that it is still very popular). Who knows what the future holds because as I understand it, you can teach an old dog new tricks. I’m game to find out.

I have so many college degrees it isn’t even funny. Why do I have them? Because I do love learning. I hated learning in middle school and high school. In fact, I hated it so much it ruined a lot of things for me. Part of this (well maybe mostly) was because our family was in a shambles and I was struggling to cope. I had no college role models in my life as nobody before me ever attended college. Now it’s fine to admit to being a first gen college student but back when I was in high school in the early ’80s, it was a huge stigma. It was awful in fact. But anyway, once I got the hang of learning (after I graduated from UC Berkeley!) I couldn’t get enough. I felt that I needed to make up for the crappy job I did at Cal but then I fell in love with learning and couldn’t stop. I knew I needed to find a career that allowed me to work and be a good parent so I naturally leaned into teaching. I got a MA in TESOL because I thought I wanted to teach ESL, since I enjoyed my time teaching English in Chinatown after work and I loved teaching English in China for two years. But the more I taught ESL at the college level, the more I realized that I hated focusing on sentence-level and grammar points. That brought me to getting teaching credentials in English and Social Science. I used that skill set for 3 years (and then even more) teaching middle school then high school but I longed for some more advanced learners, so I returned to college for an MA in English Literature. With that degree, I added on certificates in teaching college writing and college reading plus I eventually added another post graduate certificate in College Counseling. That’s a lot of classes but I loved every minute of it.

I’ve been teaching college-level English for the past 8 years and have really enjoyed myself. I joined every committee I could find that would provide me with community and allow me to get more involved in the department and college at various levels. I became a program coordinator for a great program called Guided Pathways and did this for five years in addition to teaching. I hired students and managed the program, in which I had our students, through focus groups, provide the student perspective on whatever program was asking for it at the college. I’m not one to sit still as you can see.

Unfortunately, though, I recently learned that my body isn’t what it once was. In fact, I suffer from a neuro-muscular degenerative disorder and so my upper body is no longer able to function in the same way as it once did. This means that I cannot sit at a computer and grade or lesson plan as I was once able to do (sometimes 15 hours a day) let alone teach. I have had bilateral carpal tunnel surgery (2 years ago) and it helped for only four months before everything went to hell again. I also had shoulder surgery, which did work, but I fear having surgery on the other shoulder because it may not solve every problem. I cannot continue going under the knife part by part to work for only a short amount of time. I’ve had 4 MRIs in the past couple of years that show how my spine is beginning to deteriorate, which freaks the heck out of me. My legs and feet suffer due to neuropathy (thank you diabetes) and so instead of standing still in front of a classroom, I have to keep moving around: highly annoying if you’re the student who can’t figure out where I am talking from.

This means I have to stop teaching. I have to retire earlier than I had planned. But I don’t think I’ll go out to pasture completely. That’s not my personality. I will most likely start writing something – I don’t know what yet but I hope to use voice-to-text software and find out. I have so many ideas and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to test the waters.

So here goes nothing.