okay, now I get it

Wow. Just finished what I know was the hardest final exam of the quarter (and my time in college so far), and I feel SO accomplished. This class has been the bane of my existence/my sole cause for celebration this quarter... but now looking back, it has taught me so much about who I am as a learner, and who I might be as a teacher.

When times got tough this quarter, I started lapsing into this cycle of doubt about why I'm here at all (who is my education benefiting, anyway? why do we need to learn any of this? who said all this knowledge is a good thing?). I am seeing now, though, that I could have been learning about anything in this class — seriously, underwater basket weaving, rodent psychology, anything, and because of the professor — who set an incredibly high standard for us — his careful attention to class structure, and his evident passion for the subject material, I took away much more from this class than a compartmentalized understanding of ancient comedy...

I have faced myself. I have leapt fearlessly (okay, not that fearlessly) off the academic pedestal on which I once held myself, and dived headfirst into the grueling stink of humility and hard work. Okay, so the late nights, the frustration, the banging of head-against-laptop/books were not nearly as poetic of events as I would like to think they were. But nonetheless, I walk away from this class incredibly, incredibly humbled.

This is why education is truly important. It is not about learning facts, understanding theories, even applying knowledge; it is about developing our selves, about embracing our finitude and simultaneously coming to terms with the true magnitude of our potential. This is why, at one point, we should all consider ourselves students. We can take that and apply it to as many situations as we want. More specifically, I guess, I'm seeing the value in learning, going to college, and playing into this whole "school system". The system itself may suck — but the concept of learning stays the same. When we learn, we are. We access that crazy dialectical relationship between who we have become and who we could be. We face our limits and our capabilities, all at once. This going-to-school thing just gives us a venue through which we can see how we've learned. Hmm.. this all sounds very individualist, and that's not really what I mean. I think humility is one of the greatest lessons we can learn from our education. But true humility doesn't come without challenge. It doesn't really matter what we learn here. It matters how we learn it. We go to school and learn how to thrive. How to grow. How to stare a challenge in the face and make out with it!

It's a real blessing to be able to walk away from this class with a less-than-decent letter grade, and know that I learned more in the last 10 weeks than I have in a few quarters. I walk away knowing I poured everything I could possibly manage in this class, with the time I had this quarter, and in this specific circumstance. It's been quite the journey this quarter. I think it's coming back. That whole passion for teaching thing... Hmmm. This is incomplete. But I no longer want to write. More later...