Saturday, November 5, 2011

post-grad update one

Since my last post, I've graduated from college, started working in a public high school, and now spend my Saturday nights in bed listening to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! podcasts on the speakers once used to blast dance music. Somehow, just months after graduating, I seem to have left behind all semblance of a young life. No more parties, no late nights out, no spontaneous midnight trips to 24 hour diners.

Part of it is the fact that I now live at home in Houston, a half hour drive from most friends and most things worth doing in the city. Part of it is the fact that I'm no longer living with roommates. Part of it is the simple fact that I'm no longer a college student living in a college town.

However, a significant part is due to my job. Working in a public school is very isolating, especially for a young person. I share a workspace with one other person 3 decades my senior, I spend my time with students all day rather than peers, and I work within the maddening bureaucracy of the public education system. Every day I see the young faces of broken homes, illegal immigration, and poverty, who were never shown the liberating power of education. Every day I confront unacceptably low achievement levels throughout the district. I watch seniors read at a 5th grade level and struggle with multiplication tables and I constantly wonder how we got our kids here. Somehow there's never an answer, not within the school, not within the district, not even within education policy.

Public education is not the fun, glamorous work environment most people seek upon graduating. There's no built-in social structure of co-workers and friends. I'm in bed by 11 each night in order to wake up at 6 and be a responsible adult and role model for the children whose lives I affect every day. I watch the lives of friends who are grad students, freelance writers, consultants, managers at up-and-coming companies in big cities and I am constantly struck my how much a job can shape your everyday life. Maybe next year I'll be a student again or living in a new city or starting a different job. But for now I have to keep reminding myself that I am only 22 years old, that I can still fill my life with youthful pursuits, and that I can still have an exciting future.