To Borrow a Phrase, "Be All That You Can Be"

Years ago, when I fell by accident into the profession of college English teaching, I assessed the future I imagined for myself.  The year was 1965.  And somehow through the magic and mystery of history, there were at that time far more openings for teachers than there were teachers to fill them.  I saw for myself a lifetime of moving up from school to school, "professing" to eager students, and ending up at some very comfortable liberal arts college where my duties would never be terribly demanding and I would become beloved and crotchety, a shaggy-headed, tweed-wearing, old-man-on-campus.  A legend.

In short, my limited imagination allowed only for this dreary cliche of my future self.

The market for college English teachers dried up almost immediately after I entered it, which condemned me to a lifetime of junior college teaching.  I was still in the profession, but just barely, and so I worked hard to launch myself back into my dream position.  To that end, I picked up a hard-earned Ph.D. from NYU and determined to become a publishing scholar, a track that led me to writing scholarly books and journal articles--and then to branch out through movie reviewing into a more popular style that gradually seeped into my academic writing.  The goal was to be scholarly without being academic.  I found some success along those lines too.

I tried to be all I could be in my chosen field, and even though I never (thank God) reached my movie script image of being a college professor, I did do some good work with under-prepared students who were reinventing themselves into successful college graduates.  It was wonderful work with wonderful students I came to love.  I did become all that I could be--and was damn proud of it.

As to the writing, well, I haven't become as good a writer as I wanted to be, but here and there I did come close enough to satisfy my imagination.  And being all you can be is, after all, a lifetime challenge, so, and I'm very happy about this, I'm still working at it.