Humanities

It is the right time to remember you again. I will teach the subject you taught me. I reckon that if I could get to them around half as effectively as you got to me, I'll be made. I'm glad to have rid myself of the technical writing courses at least for a semester. My criticism-heavy demo made sure of that. My gamble paid off. Now I'll be teaching what I've always wanted to teach, regardless of the fact that it's a good stretch away from my courses, both under and post-graduate. Then also, a further stretch from my previous job at the foundation.

Still, is anything at all really that far from the humanities?

I don't know how I'll measure up to you, or at least to the half that I aspire to. Despite all appearances, I'm taking this seriously. I'm familiar with people who could do this easily. I look at them and I thought I would envy them, but I didn't. I looked up to you and saw that when you taught, it all seemed so difficult. Not because you were incompetent. Not even because you were old and had to strain to hear us shout out our petty answers to your great, whispered questions. I saw that it was because you felt you had the burden of thirty-five young lives hanging on your word. Lives. I would think that to have that onus, one would go the way of the indifferent, the depressed, or the messianic. Yet, you were none of these. You were just a mother to children you never had.

I'm aware of people who think that the humanities should be easy, or worse, obsolete. I thought I would be forever angry with them. Yet how can I remain so? They were just not fortunate enough to have you for a teacher. It is a definite fault of this world that there are so few of you and so many of us, small minds.

I have one thing to my advantage. I know my measure firsthand. I know you. With measure comes direction. I will remain clear-headed for this semester at least. I will keep the other words at bay and forge on. Yet I must tell you, your measure is only half of it. Probably even the lesser half.

In the end, what would be left of the class are thirty-five or so lives. Their maesure will define my work. They will decide me more than I, them. You've always known that haven't you? In such a way, I have decided you: look now and see that I look no higher. I see you.

You have thus been remembered. I go now. There is much work to be done.