There is nothing I would rather write about right now than my plans for next year. So, here goes!
Ever since freshman year of college, I have aspired to be a college professor. Rewind two years. Ever since junior year of high school, I have aspired to be a high school English teacher. While the primary aspiration is intact and sturdy as a table built by a legendary great-grandfather, my earliest hope and dream is a reality right now, and I do not feel prepared to leave high school teaching behind. Add to my love of my profession my queer love for my setting; I have a bond with Jackson that I cannot make sense of to anybody (except some Jacksonians and one family friend). The weeks are ticking down on the MTC clock watch. But beyond my vows to the program, my heart desires to stay put. Something beautiful has bloomed in this stage of life, and to sever it short just because the obligation is up would seem to be foolhardy. I keep quizzing adults in their late thirties and up, “Is it unusual to love where you live?” “Is it rare to love your job as much as I do?” I want to ensure that I am assessing my current livelihood and passions correctly. I don’t want to be lulled into loving Jackson and my job just because I find it so darn comfortable. On the other hand, I do not want to be hastily skeptical of my affinity for my vocation and lot, just because the corporate flow of middle-class life and the steadily rising undulations of America’s ever-beckoning siren’s song of success are calling me to “move on.”
I applied to three doctoral programs in sociology this year. I thought my application was pretty good, but I was afraid I would be accepted, thereby cutting short this phase of life prematurely. Oddly enough, in the intervening months between applying and hearing back, I prayed for denials. Well, I heard back from all three the week before spring break. All were variations of negatives: one wait list, one admission but MA-only, and one outright rejection. It stings, but I am actually fervently anticipating a new direction: stay in Jackson, keep on teaching, and pursue an MA in sociology at the city’s HBCU, Jackson State. I love teaching, I love Jackson, I love sociology. Too much love, if you ask me. One of the deepest desires of my heart now is to grow in understanding and to invest more in the city of Jackson. Now that door might be opening. The only phantom of doubt that remains is whether the school that wait listed me will come back with a “yes” in mid-April. And my prayers are still something like, “Please, God, don’t say my time here is up yet.”
“She’s nuts!” you’re thinking. “Every person has choices and in making them is in control of where she goes” – well, every educated young person who was born into a thick sleeping bag of opportunity (like me) can control and choose where and when she goes somewhere. “So just choose to stay in Jackson, already, if you love it so much!” you’re thinking.
There is a morsel of hesitation in my ambitions and plans for the future, though. And I think I am slowly being weaned of this influence, but I am not sure I’ll ever be entirely free of it. I don’t think my family or friends who have known me for a long time have really given their unfettered seal of approval on my plans or desire to stay down South. I also feel that the longer I stay here, the less understood I feel by my own kin and might-as-well-be-kin. I feel like I can’t explain why I love it here so much, or why I find myself feeling so at home in black culture. I feel fully alive, in that my abilities and passions and talents are utilized here. Spiritually, I have grown. Relationally, I have been blessed and stretched. Physically, I think I am stronger than I ever was in high school or college. Intellectually, being here keeps my sociological and literary mind in shape. Still though, even with all these feelings, I think one of my friends, who I know through my more recent involvement at the Perkins Foundation in West Jackson, has hit the nail on the head: often, he has observed, when young whites come down to Jackson to do some do-gooding, then conclude that they are fond of this place and can find no reason to want to leave, their parents do not take the news with a smile. More like, with a sigh. Can I withstand that ambivalence? The support that streams from family members, at least what I am used to, is wholehearted. Why has this changed? It does make me check myself when those who have had my best interest in their hearts for so long are uncertain. There is a chance that I am imagining all this pressure. Perhaps the footsteps of any twenty-something that forge forward are tread with undue second-guessing. After all, this is when we become our adult selves, is it not? Don't want to mess that up.
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