How Old Am I?
I have just discovered something that has completely freaked me out. Ordinarily, I am pretty unfazed by the whole passage-of-time, getting-older, good-lord, what-happened-to-my-early-thirties thing.
However, I’ve just discovered through a random blog-connection that a former student of mine—a student who wrote what was without question the best essay I ever got from a freshman-writing sequence student back at that Private University in the Public Service—is now an Assistant Professor.
I’m still trying to do the math on this one. The good news, I guess, is that he managed to go from B.A. to Ph.D. in four (count ‘em: four) years. But this discovery nonetheless reminds me that, if all goes really well over the next couple of months, I’m going to wake up one day in December to discover that I’m no longer a junior faculty member.
The sound you hear is me hyperventilating.
(Thanks to Languagehat for the lead. Really. I mean it.)
24 September 2003, 10.52 pm
i suppose i’m another former student engaging in a random blog-connection.
but i don’t think i’ve ever written a “best essay” in any context.
also, no tenure-track position. in fact, i’ve shifted my career goal to being abd.
25 September 2003, 6.38 am
a) LOL
b) Absolute best wishes over making the leap from junior to non-junior faculty.
c) LOL
25 September 2003, 1.58 pm
Think nothing of it! I’m just glad I got off the hamster wheel…
25 September 2003, 10.56 pm
Hi, Eric! Glad you wandered in. You know, ABD is a worthy goal—it’s only in achieving it that one can possibly open up sufficient brain-space to contemplate the next goal. Whatever that turns out to be.
And George, thanks for the good wishes. This week, I could sure use’em.
And LH—well, is that why I’m breathing so hard and getting nowhere? Huh.