Adult Rating

A common theme for my classes seems to be taking responsibility. From my students getting their work done on time, to me getting their work graded on time...responsibility, responsibility, responsibility.

The funny thing is, of course, that even typing something like responsibility and grading in the same sentence seems to be a little over-dramatic. It is, afterall, grading papers. Its not saving the world, its grading papers. Still...it IS only grading papers, and I am not always responsible enough at my meager task.

Heh. Responsibility...that was always the negative part of growing up. Remember? When you get older, you get more privileges...and therefore more responsiblities. Ever wish you could get one and not the other?

My wife enjoys watching "Grey's Anatomy"...which is essentially today's version of E.R., with soap-opera-esque relationships, centered around (very loosely around) medicine. I'll admit--I watch now with her, as we make our way through the saga of the surgical interns in Seattle (speaking of which...man, I wish I lived in Seattle...)

Anyways, I was watching the show with Sheri the other night, after a rather frustrating day at my job (grades, schedules, etc) and it occured to me that I could, in some way, relate to the stories of the young doctors that braved the world of surgery and romance all at once. You see...they were in school for years, years and years and years...prepping for the moment that they would be doing it "for real". And though it seems as if now that they were finally "doing" the job, they would be only happy, and only excited, and confident...they aren't. And that is, in large part, because the process of becoming an adult is not encapsulated in an education. There's more to it than that; the first time the rubber meets the road, there lingers in the mind of the driver the question, "What if my first time driving becomes the worst wreck ever?"

I looked up at Sheri and shared my revelation...and then paused as I realized something even cooler--that while I can relate to the stress of these fictional characters on some level (while they're performing brain-surgery I am grading papers...so, not a complete parallel, but close), my lovely wife, who is in medicine, can entirely relate. Lives ARE actually, more and more, in her hands. It sounds silly to say that I realized this freshly, as she's in the middle of her second year of nursing school...but I did. My wife is...well, amazing...and quite an adult.

I know--this sounds incredibly cheesy. But its true...there's a moment (at least one), in the process of becoming an adult, that will cause you to question whether or not you are actually prepared for the challenge or not. Being able to face that moment is, I think, one of those dramatic instances that determine whether or not you will ever be an adult, really. Its all part and parcel of becoming a person that takes responsibility for the choices we make--even difficult ones. I have had a conversation recently with some people that would like to suggest that attending one college over another reflected the manipulation of controlling parents. All of that seems merely an excuse for people trying to avoid the moment I am addressing in this post. Being an adult means many things...but certainly the least of them is that we are the ones responsible for the choices we make...and we must choose whether or not we will risk failure by attempting to succeed.

Perhaps that's the most discouraging thing to observe about our society today...we don't want adults...because adults don't get to blame other people, and we don't get to avoid making decisions that impact others in serious ways. And that's a hard reality. We like blaming others for our problems, we prefer to say its someone else's fault. We'd prefer to always have adults taking care of us, but to never be the adults ourselves. But we need more adults...we need people who take responsibility for their own decisions, their own jobs, their own lives.

So...I'll be grading papers.