the feminist librarian reads

NOT back-to-school once again!

It’s that time of year in Boston (and most everywhere else) where folks are gearing back up for the academic year. Students are moving into dorms and apartments across the city here, and everywhere I go there are anxious groups of new roommates getting to know each other and parents dropping first-years off for the beginning of their college adventures.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of my life in Boston, and the second September in which I will NOT be enrolled in an academic program.

And I cannot emphasize to you how much I DO NOT miss school.

I know people who do, who mourn the end of their student days; I didn’t have a wholly bad time in college (1998-2005) or grad school (2007-2011). My life is the richer for the people I met and the ideas I explored therein.

But I cannot emphasize to you how the culture of institutional education was toxic for my soul, and how much better my health and well-being is now that I’m done with that part of my life. I did it because it’s what I had to do to access the learning resources I wanted to access, but I so, so do not miss the “school” part of  education.

I’m so grateful I work at a non-academic research library where I get to be an historian, I get to be involved in research and with ideas daily, without being involved in the culture of institutional schooling.

I am so grateful that I know how to continue to grow as a scholar, as an historian, as a writer, without being a student enrolled in a formal academic program.

So I find all the back to school buzz stressful and anxiety producing, because it reminds me how stressed and anxious school made me. And I’m gonna lie low here, I hope, until all that buzz here in Boston dies down a little. And be grateful I have the distance from it all BECAUSE I’M NO LONGER IN SCHOOL!