Tuesday, Cheese Sandwich

I like my job, I really do.

You’ll get the standard complaints from me that issue from most academics: meetings, grading, these kids today who don’t do the readings, but for the most part, at the end of the day (and even the middle), I’m happy to be a college teacher.

I have plenty of creative freedom; I get to hang out with interesting people and talk about things I’m interested in; I generally feel like I’m making a more or less positive contribution to the world, and I have a schedule that lets me ride my bike a lot and do yoga most days.

But the daily grind of it all gets me down.

Granted, I’m not sitting in a cubicle, pushing the same papers back and forth all day long; the classroom is often a place of surprise and mystery, unexpected things happen that require me to be nimble on my feet and not lapse into boredom and despair.

But still…

I perform pretty much the same routine every day: commuting, working, sleeping, metro-boulot-dodo as my French friends used to say.

Monday, yogurt in a cup, Tuesday, cheese sandwich, Wednesday cottage cheese, and so on.

I don’t think that human beings were meant to be such creatures of routine. “Old men should be explorers,” said T.S. Eliot. Too often, this old man feels like he’s just wearing the same path bare over and over.

Of course, this is all on me. If I really want to explore, I can. For instance, on Tuesdays, by way of a change, I could have almond butter and jelly.

I don’t have to teach the same set of readings year after year. Instead of slogging through Kant, I can assign students to try to make sense of Foucault, for instance.

Of course, that would require me to do something different than usual. And am I enough of an explorer for that? Or am I not old man enough?