on upheaval

Upheaval is a funny thing.  It is something that happens and it has an effect; for me that effect has always been like being overcome by a sudden sense of overwhelming dread.  It is never pretty, but the results are like building muscle; you tear a few things down so they can build themselves back stronger.

I was thinking yesterday about my freshman introduction to writing course that I took from an amazing feminist who is very fond of the color purple.  Like most good composition courses, the focus is not necessarily about how to write a five paragraph theme or methods of research--all of the technical aspects of writing too a backseat to the readings we did.  In the end I learned a different way of looking at the world; I learned how to see with a critical lens.  I am not sure if her class was the direct cause of my change in world view but I can safely say that it planted the seeds for the plants that I would need to eat for nourishment in the months that followed.

Shortly after basic composition, perhaps two months, I came out of the closet in a not very smooth or confident way; I was not prepared for how unsettling the experience would be.  I remember very distinctly laying on my bed as the walls of my apartment mocked me with a taunting dance.  I couldn't breathe, I was dizzy, and I felt like I was weighted to the bed.  I remember kicking off the physical effects long enough to send a text message asking for help:  "I can't do this alone."  The response came back:  "You aren't alone, but I can't help you right now."  Getting out of bed the next morning was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do.

The summer before my senior year in college, I had a few friends who stayed in town for jobs or internships.  We had GRE study parties where we usually ended up cooking some food and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, our vocabulary lists and writing samples shoved in a pile to the side of the room.  One of these friends is named Claire.  After years of believing the right-wing religious nut jobs who used the Bible to condemn me to hell, I had adopted her as my religious coach.  One day I decided I wanted her to explain a Bible verse about homosexuality so I got my shit together and drove over to her apartment where she explained several things that acted like explosives at the foundation of my rejection by God.  It was one of those new world view moments where you walk in not necessarily content with the world, but at the very least confidant that you know how it works.  I will repeat something I said earlier because it is both very important and very true:  those world changing moments, particularly their after effects, aren't very pretty.  Over the next few days that talk and its implications banged around in my head knocking shit over and leaving my thoughts in general disarray.  During the next study party, I consumed a fifth of vodka and had what can only be equated to a complete emotional breakdown.  I was innocently using the restroom one moment and I was on my knees dry heaving and sobbing while attempting to crawl back into the living room where I spilled my drink on every surface available while ranting about religion, my dead mother, the pains of being born a gay man, and people like Claire, who have the innate ability to bring that kind of shit together in a cute, original, and fun package with a velvet bow on top.

At Iowa State, English graduate students are most commonly hired for one of two jobs, a composition TA, or a speech TA.  I was hired to be a speech TA and had long been mulling over whether or not I should switch to composition at the beginning of the next academic year (better for my intended career path).  I had decided not to switch as of 6pm last night--I was comfortable where I was and reasonably confident that I could still get into a PhD program without experience teaching basic composition.  I was thinking about all these things last night while simultaneously absorbing the classroom activities of my course called Theory and Research in Composition--the class where we learn how to effect that element of a "changed worldview" into our students.  The byproduct--intended or unintended, it doesn't really matter--of learning how to do this is that I am going through another worldview change.  It suddenly became very clear that I am teaching the wrong thing, that I desperately need to switch to be a composition TA.  And not just for the resume building aspect, but for the "this is what I want to do with my life" aspect.  It is what I want to do with literature as a student of it, it is what I want to do as a professor of literature, and it is what I want to do with writing as a basic form of communication--I want to teach students that it is good to question everything, to hold the crystal up to the light and look through a different spectrum, even for a few minutes. 

It was like I was back in Dr. Udel's freshman writing course, like I was back on my bed with the room spinning, like that night I broke down on the floor my friends' apartment.  It was one of those annoying, world changing epiphanies that makes you want to throw up but only because you have some putrid shit in your stomach that has been there for too long.  Now I am trying my best to sit on my laurels, waiting from an answer from the powers that be--will I be allowed to submit a late application for reassignment?