Study

I’ve spent lots of time this summer wondering about what there is left to do in the context of being a “professional philosopher,” "professor," and “academic.” There are many reasons for this - some procedural, some existential - and mostly I find myself thinking about my classrooms.

I've been teaching for 21 years, beginning my career in the wild west of adjunct teaching and ending up as tenured full professor with a steady job and health insurance. I'm grateful for the path I've taken and where I've ended up, and I know that where I am now is the result of decades of hard work, the alignment of frameworks and emergence of opportunities that allow my hard work a home, and because of strong mentors and advocates who have helped me figure all of this out. (THANK YOU KA and Gabriela! 😀)

To be truthful, though, I didn’t pursue teaching because I wanted to be a teacher - being a teacher just seemed the most expedient way to do the thing that best expresses the core of who I am: study.

Study, as the work of following one's curiosity in the direction of understanding and expressing this variously, has both practical and personal value. Study is the work of research and scholarship; it's how we make our classrooms better, more engaging, more inviting places for students; study is the avenue for stimulating communities of inquiry, both in and outside of our disciplines; study is the way we fulfill certain demands that make our lives meaningful. Study is how I stay human in a world keen to shape me otherwise. Study is, in other words, the condition on which the other possibilities of realizing my life depend.

Getting clearer on this - a recent revelation of mid-life - that I study, that my highest sense of self is expressed in the discipline of studying, brings much about my job in a university into stark relief.