As you may have noticed, it's been a while. I graduated from college and felt that I had nothing more to say about the process of getting a degree late in life. Silly me.

For about six months after I got the degree in my hand, I looked desperately for work. It really was the "rug pulled out from under me" experience when I discovered that many (but not all) employers didn't want a newly graduated English major who is above a certain age. Big-Box Mart had a dandy greeter job to offer, but that's another post. Those months were harsh, and I was becoming rather bitter. I felt like jumping up on a Starbucks table and yelling, "I don't want to be a supervisor! I don't want to order people around! I just want to write marketing and site content!"

That, however, would have been crazy.

Instead, I went to a conference presented by an international organization I had joined in college. I got a special admissions rate because I was an unemployed scholar. Putting aside the medieval imagery of the wandering, ragged mendicant for a while, I attended sessions and looked at books. That's where it got interesting for about 18 months. I was contracted to write about Lewis Carroll in a series of three e-books. The royalties will never do more than pay for the occasional ice cream cone, but the project kept me busy and preoccupied with academic research. Also, it kept me on campus, in the library and around professors and monks. This paid off quite unexpectedly.

Last spring, as everyone was packing up after graduation, a professor offered me the chance to fill in as a senior lecturer in a team-teaching class that he would not be able to cover. It's a one-semester gig, but it again provides access to the academic library system, which is vital for serious research into literary and philosophical topics. It also means that I'll be working with students, correcting papers (a lot) and exploring the issues that show up when minds try to tackle new topics in new ways. I'm hoping that the semester will be productive for the students -- and that I don't kill any of the plants entrusted to my care by the absent professor.

He'll be back by the winter holidays.  If the plants die, perhaps I will be able to deflect his wrath by putting up a huge sparkly wreath in their place.

More later. One more thought, though: It is never too late to learn, to get that degree. You can be a little ill and 47 years old, and the children may not be at all cooperative, and the house may be a wood-heated, drafty disaster. If you don't go back to school, you will still be mired in the same state. If you do go back, your condition will be different, because you will start thinking in terms of solutions. And if you graduate and the new, munificent job still doesn't show up, make a job.

As the saying goes, God will provide. Put some faith in yourself, and in Him. Both are good investments.