Sample Culminating Essay--Rough Draft

For thirty-three years I’ve taught English in the same high school, in the same classroom, at the same desk. I love being a teacher and have never desired another career. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt captures the richness and complexity of my job: “In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw” (19). On the other hand, McCourt also captures the drudgery that is part of my job: “Papers, papers, papers, read and correct, read and correct, mountains of papers piling up at school, at home, days, nights reading stories, poems, diaries, suicide notes, diatribes, excuses, plays, essays, even novels, the work of thousands—thousands—of…teenagers over the years” (32). The stacks of papers that are always waiting for my attention exhaust me. I am beginning to think of retirement.

When I first began my teaching career, I came across Robert Graves’ “A Civil Servant,” a chilling poem that expresses the loss of humanity that tedious work causes. As I struggle to keep up with the mass of paper work that my job entails, Graves’ poem rolls through my mind:

While in this cavernous place employed
Not once was I aware
Of my officious other self
Poised high above me there,

My self reversed, my rageless part,
A slimy yellowish cone
Drip, drip; drip, drip- so down the years
I stalagmatised in stone.

Now pilgrims to the cave, who come
To chip off what they can
Prod me with child like merriment:
“Look, look! It’s like a man!”

The image of a giant stalagmite shaped like a man haunts me. Each spring as I bend over my papers with my red pen, I remind myself of Graves’ civil servant, drip, drip, dripping himself into stone. I ask myself, does the civil servant have a soul? Has his labor made him more or less human? And most important, now that I’m contemplating retirement, can life without work have meaning?

For centuries, poets have urged us to seize the day, “to gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Thoreau directs us, “Go forth, under the open sky, and list/To Nature's teachings.” A.E. Houseman calculates the brevity of life and then goes outside to enjoy the blooming cherry trees: “About the woodlands I will go/To see the cherry hung with snow.” Marvel tells his coy mistress, "Let us…tear our pleasures with rough strife/Thorough the iron gates of life.” The words of these poets stir me, for I agree with the carpe diem philosophy, “Now let us sport us while we may.” Every year I use these beautiful poems to remind my students that life is short, that time is precious, that we must not throw ourselves away. But rarely do I take long walks in the woods. And rarely do I find time to immerse myself in spontaneous, giddy pleasure. I have too much work to do.

Writers warn us that work can be downright dangerous. Wordsworth says, “The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” To him, dedicating ourselves to commerce and industry means, “We have given our hearts away.” Gregor Samsa, the hapless protagonist of Kafka’s Metamorphosis wakes up as a giant insect, thanks mainly to the exhausting job he performs every day. As he lies in bed the morning of his transformation, he laments the dehumanizing effects of unceasing labor: “’O God,” he thought, 'what a demanding job I’ve chosen! Day in, day out, on the road. The stresses of selling are much greater than the work going on at head office, and, in addition to that, I have to cope with the problems of traveling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships, which never come from the heart. To hell with it all!’” Kafka’s point is that modern labor produces hideous drones, not noble human beings. Graves suggests the same idea when he ends his poem with the pilgrim’s childlike exclamation, “Look, look! It’s like a man.” The “stalagmatized” civil servant—like Gregor Samsa—has lost his human vitality.

Today’s pop culture embraces the idea that work can destroy us. In Click, Adam Sandler plays a moving scene where the dying Michael Newman gasps out his last words, “Family first” after realizing too late that his workaholic ways caused him to fast-forward through his life. Because of his obsession with work, Newman lost his wife and missed his children’s lives as well as his father’s death. After this heart-wrenching scene, Michael awakens to discover that his tragic journey up the corporate ladder was merely a dream and that he can change his ways. The comedy ends with a youthful Michael gleefully searching through the house for his son and daughter, shouting, “Who wants a pillow fight?” The viewer is left with the image of a happy man who has learned what is really important in life—play.

In Jodi Picault’s Nineteen Minutes, a novel about a Columbine-like school shooting, the mothers of two teenagers realize the terrible consequences of their failure to pay attention to their families. Their children are lost, angry souls. The result of their mothers’ lack of focus is unspeakably violent and tragic. As a mother, I have always feared that my career could damage my children. As a result, I have worked hard to place my family first. Whenever my sons had school programs or conferences, I used my sick leave so I could be there for them. I picked them up from school every day so I could assess their mood and be there if they needed to talk. I helped them with their homework and attended their baseball and soccer games. I cooked family dinners, baked birthday cakes, and celebrated even the minor holidays. To accomplish this, however, I often rose at 3:30 a.m. to grade my papers and to make my lesson plans. As a result of my efforts, my children appear to be happy and healthy. Nonetheless, I have sacrificed the pursuit of my own pleasures in my attempts to be both a good mother and a good teacher. Retirement offers me the first opportunity in my life to indulge myself, to gather my rosebuds.

Yet, I am terrified that a life without toil will prove to be disappointing. I fear that leisure might also be destructive. In Henry IV, Part I, Prince Hal enjoys the company of Jack Falstaff, an irresponsible hedonist. Falstaff—like Michael Newman at the end of Click—embraces a playful, easy life. He urges the king not to banish him from Prince Hal’s company: “Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.” To him, merriment is “all the world.” Anthony Burgess claims in his book on Shakespeare that “The Falstaffian spirit is a great sustainer of civilization. It disappears when the state is too powerful and when people worry too much about their souls.” Part of me agrees with Burgess—and with Falstaff—because part of me agrees with Michael Newman: work interferes with family time, and pillow fights are important. However, even as he sports with Falstaff, young Hal senses that hedonism is ultimately hollow: “If all the year were playing holidays,/To sport would be as tedious as to work.” And when Hal finally commits himself to the princely job of restoring order to his realm, he scolds Falstaff for being playful when there is serious work to be done: “What, is it a time to jest and dally now?” (1.3.52) Hal must abandon his frivolous friend if he is to become a worthy King of England.

I identify strongly with the ambivalent but industrious speaker in Philip Larkin’s “Poetry of Departures.” In the poem, the speaker hears of an irresponsible man who abruptly leaves home and seizes the day: “He chucked up everything/And just cleared off.” The speaker fantasizes that such an “audacious” departure from the humdrum world could be “purifying” and even glorious. Part of him is envious of this fellow’s bold spontaneity, for “We all hate home/And having to be there.” As he escapes, the hedonist crouches in the “fo'c'sle” of a ship headed, one assumes, for adventure. Unshaven and primitive, he is “stubbly with goodness” and is having, one assumes, a damn good time. The speaker wonders, “Surely I can, if he did?” and is tempted to abandon his work so he too can “swagger the nut-strewn roads.” However, by the end of the poem the speaker chooses to remain “sober and industrious.” Every spring, I also think of running away from responsibility, down the nut-strewn roads, but then, like Larkin’s speaker, I close the doors and stay inside my office. If I abandon my desk and the tedium that trickles over me, the stalagmite might stop growing into its humanity.

Despite my temptations to put pleasure first, I have adopted Sigmund Freud’s words as my mantra: “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” Out of meaningful work and loving relationships comes happiness. My favorite character in Crime and Punishment is Razumihin, the hard worker. A very poor student, Razumihin appears “in a ragged dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed.” When we meet him for the first time, Razumihin is “at home in his garret, busily writing.” What I love most is this image of the scholar bent over his desk, moving his pen. His constant work makes him a foil to Raskolnikov, the impatient genius whose nonconformity leads him to murder. While Raskolnikov steals, Razumihin “kept himself entirely on what he could earn by work” and “knew of no end of resources by which to earn money.” Razumihin never stops working—and his labors save him. His soul remains in tact—and he ends up opening a publishing company and marrying Raskolnikov’s beautiful and noble sister. Through work and love, Razumihin achieves his “humanness.”

Osvald Alving, the young artist in Ibsen’s Ghosts, is also a hard worker. His misery begins when he can no longer paint. When syphilis begins to erode his brain, Osvald grasps the full extent of his tragedy: “My mind is broken down--ruined--I shall never be able to work again! ….Never to be able to work again! Never!--never! A living death!... Can you imagine anything so horrible?” His agony brings home the human need for meaningful labor. Now that I’m approaching retirement, Oswald’s horror as he contemplates a life without work stings me. Without my essays and red pen, without my lesson plans and my classroom, without my students and my colleagues, will I too experience “a living death”? Without the “officious other self” that dribbles down on me as I grade essays and plan lessons, what will happen to my humanity?

To mark the one-year anniversary of my younger brother’s death, my mother and I planted forget-me-nots in her beautiful flower garden in Pueblo, Colorado. On that sunny April morning, we could think of nothing better to do with our grief than to put something living in the ground, something to remind us that life goes on, that spring rejuvenates. As we broke dirt clods, yanked weeds, and breathed the rich smell of earth, Voltaire’s words from the end of Candide sang inside of me: “We must cultivate our garden.” My mother and I enjoyed peace and even happiness as we worked that day. I sense that when I end my long career, I will take some time to enjoy the forgotten pleasures of life. I will turn off my alarm clock and read the morning newspaper in bed. I will take long walks through my neighborhood and in the mountains. I will read books and meet friends for lunch. I will gather wild flowers and observe flights of geese. However, I suspect that I will soon tire of the easy life and will need to dedicate myself once more to work. Like Voltaire, I believe that “Our labor keeps from us three great evils—idleness, vice, and want.” The drip, drip, drip of our effort shapes us slowly and permanently into human beings.