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 | March 2004: Another semester halfway done! When I was in high school a teacher once took me aside, gave me the comforting hand, and said, "Don. Always remember this: life is vapor." I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Now, as the months on the calendar roll by, I am starting to understand. I had my interview with the Peace Corps on March 2nd. Barring any kind of natural or Don-made disaster, I will be leaving for an undetermined Spanish-speaking country in late August. More to come... DECEMBER 2003: Much water has flowed under the bridge since I last updated my website. For the Fall of 2002 and Spring of 2003 my world basically revolved around a word called "thesis". It was the most ambitious project I have attempted to date, and the 145 pages that it assumes I submit as evidence of tremendous emotional and intellectual struggle. Having successfully defended it in May, thus completing my Masters of Arts in Regional Economic and Social Development, I put the books down for a while and ventured off to Manchester, New Hampshire to work on the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Early in the summer I wore the hat of Deputy Director of Operations, coordinating intern activities and supervising (read troubleshooting) the campaign voter database. As the summer wore on (and working 70 hour weeks it certainly did wear) I began shifting my work to field activities. This began with canvassing (the door to door part of campaigning), then phone-banking. If you thought selling newspaper subscriptions over the phone was tough work, try getting people excited about a presidential election about a year and a half before election day. No good deed goes unpunished, though, and from all this hard work I was appointed to fill in for a regional coordinator in the lakes region of New Hampshire while she was gone for a wedding. It would figure that this would be the week that Kerry was scheduled to visit the region, so I was basically put in charge of finding a venue and getting it as packed as possible with Kerry supporters and undecideds. There were a couple of catches. First, this region was primarily dominated by two political types: conservatives Bush fans and uber-liberal supporters of anti-war candidate Howard Dean. Second, the event was scheduled to be held on a Tuesday morning. It was only after a valiant effort of talking softly to literally thousands of residents of the region that I was able to confirm enough attendees to keep my bosses from panicking. That isn't to say that I wasn't panicking. In the end all the panicking was for not. The room was packed, Kerry was on the ball, and at the end of the day we had nearly doubled the amount of signed supporters in the region. As summer drew to a close the powers that be started to indicate to me that the Kerry campaign was not where I needed to be, so after a two-week trip to a camp in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (where I underwent political detox), I returned to Lowell, Massachusetts to accept a teaching job at my alma mater. Political Science 101--Intro to American Politics. If there is anything in my life that comes close to my thesis in terms of blood, sweat and tears of joy it has been my first semester of teaching. I had two fantastic classes of about 35 students each, and we shared a unique journey through the world of American Politics. Using videos, PowerPoint and class participation exercises, my life's purpose this semester was to breath some life into the subject of politics and give them the foundation of knowledge needed to be a sophisticated consumer of democracy. I can't say enough good about my first exposure to university teaching. As all good jobs do, I constantly felt pushed and pressured to perform better. Unlike most jobs I've had, however, the results of all this pushing are tremendous growth (of knowledge and character)--for my students and I alike. At the end of a day of teaching that began at 7am with paper-grading and lecture preparation I felt as though every ounce of me had been consumed, yet the prospect of sparking my students' interest one more time always left me excited to do it all over again. Coupled with having enough vacation time to recharge and pursue other hobbies a bit, I must conclude that this job offers one of the most sane lifestyles that I have seen or heard of. While I have a couple of different careers in my long-term crosshairs at this moment, teaching will most probably be one of them. With the new year upon me, immediate plans involve teaching another American Politics class over the Christmas break, another in the spring semester, as well as team-teaching a course in Middle East Politics. Beyond that, things get pretty fuzzy. Applications to a doctoral program are in order sometime in my near future, however my gut is telling me that I need some time off first, probably spending a year or two doing public service in some capacity. More on that to come. Cheers to all and best wishes for 2004,
Don
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