Late Night Questions

This is my tenth year teaching at my University. I have tenure, the cost of living is low, the mission of the university is important to me.

Next year, I will have lived longer here than I have lived in any one place in my life. I who was born and raised in the San Francisco bay area, who has lived in Oregon, Chicago, Seattle, New York City for ten years, will have live d in this depressed rust belt Ohio town longer.

The other day as I was walking through our quite lovely campus, filled with trees and little hills, some thing, some scent, produced an intense memory of the smell of the ocean. I walked on, but for a moment my mind placed me on the coast, surf crashing, wind blowing, skies gray and changeable. Gulls cried piercingly in a memory so strong I could see them cutting sideways through the wind.

I am hundreds of miles form any ocean, thousands from the mighty Pacific.

Because of my heavy teaching load I can’t do the level of research I used to. I feel like I under serve my research students and my classroom students as well, yet I can see that I work much harder at it than many of my peers. Yet, my efforts are met with fear and loathing by many students whose primary evaluation of a professor is on how easy they are, and how little work they have to do.

Ohio asks us to do more with less. We try, but of course, we do less well.

Am I in the right place? Is this the best I can do? How can I do better? Can I just relax and enjoy what I have? Can I be the Scientist I’d like to be? Can I be the scientist I used to be? What about my hobbies dropped for lack of time? Art, writing, music... is there no room for them in my life?

It is late. I have hundreds of quizzes to grade. No time for a midlife crisis. In truth, most of the time I DO manage to relax and enjoy what I have.

Perhaps I just need a fast car and some nights on the town.

Tonight, halfway through October in this northern clime, two moonflowers light up my trellis under a cool cloudy sky. That perhaps is enough for now.