Writer's Book Came Together Between Cab Fares

You have to stop here and look at your phone.

Today, carpets; yesterday, the aunts; the day before, the funeral of poor S.; and every day, the remembrance in the library of the rope of work which I must spin;--in this way life is dragged down and confuted. We try to listen to the hymn of gods, and must needs hear this perpetual cock-a-doodle-doo, and har-tar-kut right under the library windows. They, the gods, ought to respect a life, you say, whose objects are their own. But steadily they throw mud and eggs at us, roll us in the dirt, and jump on us.

Emerson would view our conformed society as blind for we do not see the endless opportunities and freedom that we have been offered in this world. We are limiting ourselves from the unique and creative contributions we could be giving back to our society by conforming “to large societies and dead institutions” (535). Not only would he be thoroughly frustrated with the way our society has turned out, I personally feel that he would feel helpless and overwhelmed by the amount of potential and capabilities that have been restricted to each individual. This issue of conformity relates back to his main idea of perspective. The more perspective we allow ourselves to have, less blind we will be to our society that is constantly progressing.

…The current school system talks like Emerson with motivational posters and the occasional motivational speaker, as well as teams of teachers to pat you on the back the whole way and say “You can do it!” Yet, sadly, it walks very different from its talk. When a single failure in High School made by a budding young man, who is still trying to figure out who he is, will very likely exclude him the top colleges of his choice, there’s no way to get back up to where you were. When a similar young man, in a similar stage of life, has a single failure he is likely to be excluded from many law schools and medical schools, because it’s just so difficult to resuscitate a GPA after a hit like that. If the same mistake is made in law school or medical school and you manage to stay in school your chances to get a good job may have just disappeared.

At the end of the semester, the week after a cheerless and lonely Thanksgiving, on a dreary, rainy day, I was trudging along with mobs of students through Parlin Hall, the English building, when someone called my name.  I looked around.  Damp, dripping students were coming and going in the hallway, many chattering chatting texting on cell phones, some hooked up to iPods, alone, jostling along with backpacks and books.  Then I saw Dr. Camille Braddock, a professor I’d had in graduate school.

“Tom!” she said.  “What luck—I was just thinking about you.”

I felt a sudden wave of guilt and anxiety.  She had no reason to be thinking about me.  I asked, “What?”

Dr. Braddock stepped between a pair of giggling girls and came over.  She was dry—had probably been teaching in one of the classrooms upstairs—and trim and cheerful, carrying an armload of multicolored folders.  Student work, probably: even professors had to grade, sometimes, a little.

“Absolutely,” Dr. Braddock said.  “I was thinking about you—wondering if you might be able to do me a favor.”

A favor.  I looked away, down the hall to the retreating girls—still giggling, and it briefly occurred to me to wonder just what the hell they were so happy about—and I then looked back at Dr. Braddock.  It was one of those day-to-day moments that everyone has at times, I think, and seem to happen to me fairly regularly, moments that open up into an eternity, an endless unfillable void where a person can instantly pause to consider just how screwed-up a life can become.  A favor.  I was already doing too much, and following through on too little.  I was a post-doc, a lecturer, an adjunct—a serf.  I was teaching two sections of Intro to Literature and a section of Composition and Rhetoric at the university, and three sections of comp at the community college.  I was tending bar three nights a week to get enough extra money to at least make payments on my loans.  I was scrambling around trying to find a tenure-track job.  And Dr. Braddock, who should have known or at least sensed my status and situation, wanted to ask me for a favor.

“A favor?” I asked.  I was starting to come up out of the void, and I was pissed, and depressed.  A fucking favor.

The void opened up again.  Despair seeped out.  I do too much, I don’t follow through enough.  It was the end of the semester: in a few days I would have 150 or so papers to grade and a job search to organize.  A life to lead.  Despair seeped out of the void, enveloped me.  I was going to say Yes, of course I was—I couldn’t say No, ever.  My parents raised me to be nice, to be agreeable, to be helpful, and I am.  It’s a quality that has never served me well.  When friends need help moving, I move.  When students think their grade is too low, I raise the grade.  Dentists and doctors schedule my appointments at weirdly inconvenient times.  Butchers sell me bad meat.  I paid too much for my car, and pay mechanics too much for not fixing it.  I can’t say No.  If I was a girl, I’d be pregnant all the goddamn time, with a half-dozen or so brats from previous favors—previous Yeses—squalling around unfed in dirty diapers.  It’s just the way I am.  When I look in the mirror I see a very weak man.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.  The void closed.  The despair, I knew, would linger.  “I mean—sure.  I don’t have any plans or anything.  I like cats.”