20141203.0710

I wrote in my journal last night that "I feel I must confess that I look forward to the end of the term," something I think I have indicated in earlier posts to this webspace. Soon after, though, I found myself musing on the phrasing "feel I must confess," as if looking forward to having time off is somehow a sin for which I must atone. The teaching I do is supposed to be a calling, something only done by those who love what they do (else why would they suffer such low wages for it?), and there is something awry in wanting release from the ostensibly beloved. Too, I am acculturated such that diligent work is virtuous--the more so the more so. Time off thus comes off as something of a lapse in virtue. And I am aware of cultural currents that flow in such ways as make teaching, particularly at the collegiate level, "not really work," so that to look forward to time away from it is disingenuous.

I do not know if I have ordered my points well. Whether I have or not, though, and whether or not I have a complete list (it is not likely), I can identify things that prompt the feeling of needing to confess, of having somehow sinned and thus of being in need of penitence. I do not subscribe to a doctrine that can prescribe a particular number of incantations or some specific physical hardship to redress what I seemingly cannot help but feel is error (although I know it is not, but knowing and feeling are different things entirely, and the latter almost always triumphs over the former). I do, however, have other work to do than that which I do in the classroom, and I will be attending to that in plenty as my means of making right the purported wrong I commit in looking forward to being away from the classroom. Because I should not ever not be working, right? Especially if I am going to be asking for a bit of help, yes? I dare not look like I am lazy or wasteful, after all.

But all this is is whining, of course. It is a feeble attempt by one who sucks uselessly at the public teat (for I teach in a humanities field at a state school) to justify his impending indolence. Such people ought to feel shame at not contributing, at receiving benefits without working. That kind of thing is only for those whose incomes come from investments, after all, and who are famous for whatever it is that makes people famous. But they are of a different sort altogether, not bound by the strictures that apply to those who work--or who should work. Those people have jobs to do, and they had better do them; there are others waiting to take the jobs if they will not or cannot, and they will not be looking forward to having time off from work every now and again.