The experience of writing my dissertation was for me the ultimate bootstrapping transformation. I don’t think I’ve played by the a-list rules very consistently since then (if I had I’d be Michael Berube or someone like him, maybe), but there have been aspects of my scholarly life every bit as intense and eye-opening as my time in the etherblogobathycyberrealsphere from 2004-on.

There is no easy way out when you’re doing something you’re passionate about. Caring is difficult — it means that things matter, and when things matter, they hurt.

Thanks, to the both of you, for the thinking you do, and for sharing those thoughts/ideas out loud via the blog. You help others contain multitudes as well, and that’s a Good Thing.

Cheers,

Bill

Gonna plug Strong Opinions, Weakly Held here just ’cause it fits and will probably be seen by 20 times more folks here in your comments than at my place.

Keep the faith.

And fwiw, I contain enough multitudes to border on qualifying for certain highly undesirable diagnoses. At least you’re fairly lucid in explicating your multitudes.

Come on, we are all WONDERFUL. (insert slightly screwy grin here)

I think this thought about getting over our fears is both useful and a bit naive, because it is through our fears we learn sometimes, eh? Maybe we need to learn how to use them. The image of Tai Chi is coming to mind…

But really, I’m just a classroom teacher trying to keep my students foremost in my mind. That’s all. That makes me an agonizer and a rule breaker of the first order ( i.e. refusing to get a doctorate because it would interfere with my grasp of a wider world and interfere with my deep creativity and then expecting the Academy to embrace me on my own terms). And I haven’t changed my mind about any of that. I continue to worry that I am taking the easy way out by leaving formal education. I am really really really worried about that.

Thanks for pushing me to think about what’s important, and how to get over myself and my fears.

I guess I’ve changed my mind about where I want to fit in society. When I was younger, I idolized the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who never bought into the game. I still admire that kind of integrity (though I better recognise now that in many cases it is more prosaic self-destruction at work). Working with you, other people who were in the loop this week, and others out in the network have me feeling more or less OK with being a (hopefully disruptive) cog in the machine.

Maybe this post should have ended with: “how have you rationalised selling out?” This comment might have worked for that too.