A Quick Trip down the Other Side of the Mountains

For the past six weeks, I've been on the road, often the same road, for six or more hours.  So this week's journey down the other side of the mountain was a refreshing change in that it was shorter.  It was also refreshing because it gave me a view into the near future.

In addition to teaching online classes this fall, I'll be teaching first year English courses in a physical classroom at Spartanburg Methodist College.  Since I had never been to that campus, I thought it was wise to take a trip to see it and to meet my new department chair, and to do that before the first day of class, and that's what I did on Thursday.

Happily, the campus wasn't hard to find--hurrah for highways marked with signs to schools, and for follow up signs on secondary roads.  And what a campus it is!  It is huge for a small, liberal arts college, which is even more surprising, considering that it only started offering 4 year degrees recently (it began life as a 2 year school).  I parked my car under a beautiful tree, thought about my own Lutheran undergraduate school down the road in Newberry, and felt a momentary pang.

The English department is in one of the newest buildings on campus, and it is beautiful.  The classrooms have are well appointed, and some of them have gorgeous views of ancient trees and rolling hills.  My chair was welcoming, as was everyone I met on campus, from future colleagues to the women in the closed coffee shop to the cleaning staff to the Public Safety officers who helped me with a parking sticker and ID.

I didn't meet any students, but that wasn't the purpose of my trip.  I wanted to find out basic information like location and copy machine rules and how long it takes from my house to my teaching workplace.  I'll feel much easier in my spirits when I make the trip for the first day of class on August 15.

After that, I made my way to Columbia, SC to see the two grad school friends I see periodically.  It was delightful to reconnect and strange to think about all that has happened since then.  When I last saw them in August of 2022, I was about to move to seminary housing, and now, I've moved back.  I have a new part-time teaching job and a new part-time preaching job, opportunities that weren't even on my radar in August.

As I was talking to my friends, I realized that I haven't ever had this much freedom in the classroom before; for example, I could choose any books for my classes that I want, and students have much less obstacles to getting them.  They go to the bookstore, get what they need, and it's all part of the financial aid package, so no need for waiting for student loan checks to come through or any of the other ways that keep students from getting their books--at least, that's the way I understand it.  Of course, for the classes I'm teaching, the first year writing/literature classes, there's plenty of online resources, so I didn't order books.  But I could.  I have never been completely free to choose my own books, and I've taught at a wide variety of places.   At best, I've always had 3 to choose from, and I had to choose one.  From an accrediting standpoint, from a bookstore stocking standpoint, I understand.  But how delightful to be able to choose more freely!

For the future, I'm already thinking of the possibilities, poets I could support, opportunities to have poets interact with my students via a Zoom session.  This time, I didn't have much time to make a decision, and I decided to take the easiest route.

I had easy travels the whole 48 hours, and I know I'm lucky.  There's road construction between Newberry and Columbia, which often but not always snarls up traffic, and there's similar construction approaching Asheville exits on the other end.  But this time, I was lucky.

Yesterday, as I drove home through the hazy mountains, I thought about how lucky I feel these days. I'm looking forward to the upcoming months, not dreading them.  I feel hopeful about the future, not foreboding.  It's a nice change from some of my past years.