When I accepted my job as a teaching assistant in an elementary classroom, I initially planned to only work there for a year. Then my other life plans were postponed, or disrupted, and I ended up staying for three years instead. I loved the class of students that I got to work with throughout these years, and learned a lot from being in this environment. But I knew that now was the right time for me to leave - to not start working with a new class, but to pursue other interests and a find a clearer direction for myself.
I love stories and am obsessed with narrative mirroring, so on the final day of school I intentionally put on the same outfit that I’d worn on my first day at the school, three years ago (although this time, of course, I was also wearing a face mask). We spent much of the day packing up the third grade classroom and moving things into the fourth grade classroom, in preparation for next year. There were closing ceremonies in which the first graders presented roses to the eighth graders, to say goodbye and wish them well as they move on to high school. Then, back in the fourth grade classroom, where we’d piled our things against one wall and had no chairs or desks set up yet, the class presented me with a large posterboard, showing photos of all of the students, and a message of thanks to me for the three years I’d helped them. After this, as we ate our lunch, one student said, “I told [other student] that Jenna was gonna tear up when we gave her the board, and I was right!”
About a week ago, a fan tweeted author Maggie Stiefvater that she was upset to have gone to a book store and discovered that Maggie was there signing books just days before. To this, Stiefvater replied, “if you consider time as a porous sponge (one of the green and yellow ones, not the blue or red ones, please) rather than a line, I’m still there.” And I feel this, in a certain way - I might consider the time I’ve spent working at this school as a part of my past, done with and over. But in reality, the experience has become a part of who I am; in some ways, always, I’ll still be there. The same can be said of any of my past experiences - if time is a porous sponge, then I am still riding scooters with my brother at my childhood home; I’m still selling Girl Scout cookies outside of a grocery store in Sonoma County; I’m still seventeen and stargazing in the back of my friend’s truck; I’m still a college student taking an overnight bus from Paris to Berlin. And the hope is that somehow, I’ve left a part of myself in each of these places and experiences in turn - that somehow I have been incorporated into the fabric of this school, or those students and coworkers.
When I drove home on that sweltering final day of school, I played the radio in my car. On a classic rock station, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” started playing, and I smiled, because everything in life is a random, coincidental, miraculous accident, and yet we are all so capable of creating meaning from the chaos.
I’ve been listening again to Welcome to Night Vale, which was the first podcast I ever got into. The first time, my interest faded away shortly after the 100th episode. Over the past several weeks I started listening to it from the start, and have now made it past anything I remember hearing from before. It’s such a fascinating mix of deeply profound meditations on the human condition, cutting satire of modern society, and humor based entirely on non-sequitur. Somehow, though, it all works. The show also does a great job of maintaining narrative structure by using essentially a television model - each individual episode can focus on some minor conflict or plot, which resolves within the bounds of twenty-five minutes, but then there are longer arcs, hinted at occasionally and developing over time, that come to a head about once a year. It is odd though, going back and listening to old episodes in which the script parodies corporate sponsorships, then hearing dynamic ads at the beginning and end of each episode. I don’t think less of the creators for this - we do live in a capitalist society, after all, and they have to do what’s necessary to continue getting paid for their art - but there’s something deeply ironic about it.
I also played through the game Minit, in which you explore a small world, solve problems, and work towards fighting a villain - but every 60 seconds you die, and wake back up in your house. It’s a necessarily fast-paced game, built on discovering new things and then planning out your next minute-long life to accomplish something new each time. It was fun and well-written, and I both finished the main story and grabbed all the collectables (with occasional help from a walkthrough) in under three hours. The setting is charming and interesting, the writing simple but engaging, and the core gameplay mechanic is addicting in a fun way. I played it on PC, but it’s available on a ton of platforms including mobile. For a pretty cheap, short, but rewarding game, I’d totally recommend it.
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