Ed Week With The Two of Them

A quick note from a rather dry class in the HFAC on campus at the Y.

I love Education Week.  I still struggle to choose the right class each hour  — and often pick wrong — but the essence of being here is almost as sweet as ever.  Kerry Muhelstein, Matthew Gray, Lynne Hilton Wilson, Marie Ricks… the teachers grow more dear with time.  As for the classes I love less — and they are more frequent than I wish — I still struggle with the teachers who try to cleverly splice their actual content with fluffy stories that are supposed to get my heart involved.

Give me content, people.  My heart is already here.  Get to the meat.

Betsy is here for most of the week; Avie came for Monday and Tuesday.  My theory is that it’s easier to feed a hungry child than a disinterested one, and so I casually disregard the age limits and feel zero guilt about it.

I feel a fragmentation of myself even here, though.  That sense of “part of me is welcome; part of me probably isn’t” persists, but does not overwhelm, me this visit.  Does it become more pronounced each year?  It feels like it.  But I also summon little personal concern about it; it’s just another exterior thing to manage.  It’s just another part of life, of being big.  I don’t know that I’m comfortable fitting completely inside any box, be it religion, culture, lifestyle, or any other form of dogma out there.

Betsy is enamored with classes for the most part.  There’s a few exceptions (like the career one she went to that was geared to people with law degrees) but it’s mostly all win.  And Avie had a great time too.   My own enjoyment in classes is down; my enjoyment in the experience overall is much higher as I spend time with the two of them.