Academia

A few weeks ago, I got a hankering for academia, and e-mailed my adviser from my master's program asking if she would second-author my thesis if I worked on turning it into a journal article for publication. She of course agreed, and told me to send her a draft when I had one.

I've been dragging my feet for weeks on said pare-down, and with good reason. It's a major undertaking, at least in theory -- the thesis was 100 pages plus, and a journal article needs to be around 20 to be submitted. I was dreading the task, but when the star aligned and I got a full weekend off from my part-time job, I figured it was a sign that I should probably take the plunge.

After hemming and hawing all day yesterday, I got up early this morning, and holed up in a nice little coffee shop with an espresso-laden drink that gave me the shakes, and a great soundtrack of 1940s music that they had playing. And about half an hour in, I found myself really enjoying my work, and missing academia. What I was doing was, for the most part, academia-light, but I loved being immersed in my research again, and putting together something that might (fingers-crossed) be put out there for other teachers/researchers/academics.

I got accepted into UVM for their MAT program for next year. This is a part of the hoop-jumping I have to go through to be a real live certified teacher. Part of me is excited, and part of me is groaning internally. This kind of writing and research won't be involved, and I know going in what to (generally) expect. But it WILL be learning, nonetheless, with people who want to learn and discuss and improve their teaching, and that, at least, will be mentally stimulating to a degree. But today's work has started a twinkle within me to think about doing the Ph. D. thing in the future...maybe even in education, which I swore up and down that I would never do. I guess the distance I have from last year has given me a little perspective...but I would still have a lot of mental convincing to go.