Once upon a time my family got stuck on a log flume ride, all five of us, Mom Dad and three adolescents crammed into one big fake log that came to an abrupt stop halfway up a steep climb. I don't recall how long we sat there before an attendant came along to release us from our uncomfortable stasis, but I remember wishing the ride would just for heaven's sake get moving--I didn't much care where.
It is the nature of roller coasters to swing from extreme highs to gut-dropping lows with a lot of wild whirling in between, so I guess I should be delighted that the roller-coaster my emotions have recently been riding keeps moving, even if some of the places it takes me are uncomfortable.
Just in the past week I have emerged from a class after teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" so exhilarated that I felt like I was floating down the hallway, and I later entered another class so full of despair that I could barely keep from crying in front of my students. I had made the mistake of watching the video of Zelenskyy's visit to the Oval Office just before class. (My maiden name was Zelesky. My grandparents left Lithuania to flee the Bolsheviks. I hate to see the underdog get bullied.)
Last week I met with a student who admitted that he did not recognize many of the words in the writing he had submitted as his own, and later I read a set of student essays that filled me with awe over my students' creativity (goslings that look like lumps of dryer-lint!). I need to read some mediocre pieces just to provide a bit of respite between the highs and lows.
On Sunday, in response to a challenge from a former colleague, I finally put on paper a draft of a personal essay I've been gnawing over for years, which took me to a very dark place where I once felt hopelessly stuck, but writing about it provided a liberating sense of accomplishment. It's an early draft with a chunk missing from the middle, but it says something I need to say and opens the door to further exploration, further highs and lows.
And today I face a pile of administrative claptrap related to a new project that will either make a significant difference in our campus culture or turn into a massive waste of time and energy, but even as I was kicking myself for getting dragged into this thankless endeavor, I received an email message full of praise for an academic essay I published last year, the kind of praise academic writing rarely receives, and the praise is going to be published for everyone to see. (You'd better believe I'll share the link when it becomes available, shameless self-promotion or not.) I promised myself I wouldn't cry but I'm keeping the tissues handy.
And the hits just keep coming--the ups and downs, the long slow climb before the endless fall, the twists and turns that keep me wondering where I'll end up next, but at this point I'm just glad the roller-coaster keeps moving forward. Better to keep moving than to get stuck. After all, it's not the twists and turns that kill you--it's the sudden stop at the end.
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