Should I really be applying for a master's in teaching?

Should I really be applying for a master's in teaching?

- What I really want is an MFA in writing, followed by teaching freshman comp.

But in all practicality, I'm seeing how the adjunct professor world works, and I can't become a "Beltway warrior," teaching at one college in the morning and another at night. I won't live in my car. I also need healthcare. Adjunct professors have all the job security and benefits of temps. I wouldn't want to go the route of a Ph.d in English which is what it would require to teach tenure track at a larger college. I don't care about literature the way I care about writing.

- What I really want is to throw practicality to the wind and dive into a Ph.d. in Tibetan studies and Buddhism at UVA.

But in terms of work, there's nothing I can do with it, or rather, nothing I can do with it that will pay the bills. Unless I were willing to relocate to where any scrapings of work might be. Which I'm not.

Today I had a very hard session at tutoring, so I know I'm feeling down. I'm also aware that I'm on the rag and thus very emotional.

I can take high school attitude. But I can't deal with learning disabilities, especially kids who have IAPs whose parents never told us. Today I was asked to help a learning disabled kid review for a test tomorrow, a test for a class where he knew nothing at all about subject, and had never once opened his textbook, largely because his reading level doesn't enable him to fully comprehend the textbook. Yet the only way we found out he might have an IAP (thus a learning disability) is a comment he dropped to another tutor, "Oh, I don't do homework. I go to the learning center where the teacher helps me." Which I learned, by the way, several hours after the session.

Arrrrgh.

The real trouble isn't that I didn't know about his disability (and thus the whole session was completely useless). The real trouble is that learning disabilities put my teeth on edge. I don't want to deal with them, and when I have to, I force myself, but I just hate it. There's a part of me that stands back and thinks, "Oh my god, you are so stupid."

Which, I dunno, maybe I should go for adjunct professor. At least then part of my job would be weeding.

We're winning??! We're winning! 24Hour donation prize.

Do you have twelve bucks?

It's all about sheer numbers of donors.

DoMore24 is 24 hours of fundraising (the clock runs till midnight tonight). The project with the most donors wins not just the donations, but an additional $4K towards, well, in our case--

-- the renovations that the county just approved yesterday. Phase one has begun!

And we're winning.

If the temple stays #1 by midnight tonight with the highest number of individual donors, it'll make a huge difference. I don't think I can sell $4,000 worth of toys. Not in a day anyway.

So do you have twelve bucks?**

You'd be supporting the 24-hour prayer vigil, daily prayer request practices (most monasteries expect a donation for each prayer request; we've always done them free), the Garuda Aviary wild bird rescue and sanctuary, nuns going out to run Buddhist meditation classes in prisons, the home of nuns like Ani Samla who cares for our feral cat colony (they've all be TNR'd), a 65-acre wildlife refuge, and a place the Montgomery County Interfaith committee called:

"...the best kept secret in Montgomery County." They said our place is amazing, yet no one knows we're here.*

Eeeeee!



* Actually, the birders know we're here. The Peace Park wildlife refuge is listed in the local birder's guide and is a regular stop for rare birds.

** We're winning!


ETA: There's also the food bank, animal rescue, my Tibetan classes--you get the idea. We do lots of Good Things.

We--we could win this. Just two and a half hours left.

We could actually win this.

In the next two and a half hours, whoever get the greatest number of donors wins $4,000 -- in our case, to go towards the mandatory renovations the county's required of the temple.

Just two and a half hours.

This is as bad as playing video games.



Ani Dawa (in front and to the far left), is in charge of construction. She's Swiss (the French side), a wonder of speed and efficiency, and she smiles under any amount of pressure. She also quotes the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy which she (correctly) feels is the greatest sci-fi novel of all time.

Most memorable moment: walking with her in the Peace Park at 10pm, she turned off the flashlight. "We can see better in the dark."

She was right.