Does this border on the obsessive?

This morning, I put DH out of the car at his shuttle stop and I kept on driving to work. On my way I saw a student, nothing new there. She had her bookbag on her back and was buttoned up tight to brave the cold. And out of no where I just got insanely jealous. I wanted so badly to park my car, get a bookbag and go to a class. Any class, French, Math, Bio, a Chem lab, Western World lit, it didn't matter. I just want school.

So, it got me to thinking (and no, I'm not about to go into a lamentation about not being able to go start a PhD in the fall) am I addicted to school? And if so, is that bad? Are all addictions bad? At first I would say no, but then when I think about it a bit more I wonder, does an addiction mean you border on the obsessive? How would you know if you were addicted to school? What would you look for?

I do have the need to smell books, I can think of worse things to smell.

I do find myself looking at course schedules to find just one more class to take.

I love shopping for school supplies. I love picking notebooks out.

And, I can't imagine myself not being in a classroom, either as a student or teacher.

I had a neighbor tell me once that the only reason I wanted to go to school was so that I didn't have to grow up, because as long as you are in school you can avoid 'adult' responsibilities. She also felt that I thought too highly of the academia and accused me of having Ivory Tower Syndrome. Now, two problems with this:

1. Being in school, at least for me at both the u-grad and grad level NEVER meant avoiding adult responsibilities. I worked the entire time because in my house, the rule was such that when you turned 18 you were on your own as far as school went. My folks paid for me to go to private school k-12 and figured that I should be able to handle what came next. So, I worked and took out loans. Both of those activities were very 'adult'. I had to learn about promissary notes, loan payments, consolidations, and at times had to debate whether or not I could afford an extra semester. I also worked 2-3 jobs at a time as an undergraduate student just to be able to maintain. And, I had no car. I depended on rides and had to schedule classes around that. I walked to work in between classes.

As a grad student, the responsibilities of course grew. In my program I didn't receive an stipend/TAship for grad work. So, I had to again make the decision as to whether or not it would be work$h it in the end. Taking out more loans and working (at times full-time) was difficult. The total of all my loans could buy me this to ride in or half of this to live on. You have to be very adult about making decisions regarding that much money.

The nature of graduate work (even at the MA level) also requires an adult attitude. I had to read, research, and write, on my own for much of the time. I had a wonderful advisor, but it was still up to me to actually do the work.

2. I don't have Ivory Tower Syndrome. First off, I'm not in any Ivory Tower. I'm in a building made of bricks and mortar, and technically as an adjunct I don't really have a building/office space of my own if you want to get into the spatial dynamics of the situation. I could go even a step further and discuss that issue: not having an office, or limited space, what does that say about how my work is valued? I lugged everything around in an old leather bag. But, I digress. The work I do and see myself doing in every way touches the world outside of academia. My research interests have me looking at issues of language politics and who gets to say what where, and how they say it, and how the message is received, and how this shapes our attitudes about culture/race/class. Why is this important? Well, in a world of sound-bites, you better hope that your 20 second relief gets cut and edited in just the right way.

I also see that we still talk about valuing language and writing but do we really? And what kind of value$ are we willing to put down? Many of our students (k-12) in poor urban environments still lack the ability to communicate effectively so that they can become active participants in circles outside of their communities. Who's responsible for this? Who's gonna teach them? How are we gonna teach? What approaches work best? I should also add that lots of our non-native speakers get more programs/funding than our natives speakers who could still be looked at as not holding enough English speaking skills to be effective communicators. That's not to say I'm against funding ESL research/work because that's another area I've been strongly committed to for much of my working life.

No, no, no. I don't plan to be locked in an office with books and coffee. Real academic work is not that easy. Working with language and writing and people means that your gonna get dirty. And I want to lather myself in the mud.