No Native

Although there's been a two year gap in between my last post and this new one, I want to continue writing under this Blog. I've moved to another place and am still no native. Luckily for me, it appears that many people in Denver--my new place of residence-- are also Not From Around Here. It's a relief to be friends with people from New Mexico, Boston, Illinois, and L.A. There are no subtle jabs at my lack of New England ancestry, like when in my third week of school in Vermont, a colleague casually asked another why the school would hire a librarian from California. There are no obvious reminders of families living in the same area of Colorado for the last four generations, like when many students' grandparents or even great grandparents had gone to the same school. There are no sly mentions of a bone deep exclusivity that categorizes one person as a Vermonter and another a Flatlander. No, Denver subscribes to a much more common method of judging a person: wealth and lack thereof.

Maybe you could argue that the Northeast Kingdom's exclusivity club is more in keeping with the American tradition. Old families, farming, surviving in a harsh climate, living on the line between poverty and making it. Although.... it's pretty damn American to exult money, the making of it, and the privileges it buys.

Regardless, Denver, with its melting pot of citizens and its bumper to bumper traffic is my new home. I miss Vermont with my whole heart, something that I wouldn't have thought possible three years ago. But I have to admit, it's nice to see the plethora of humans that were not available in the whitest state in the Union.

I'm gonna be a liberrian like you and sit in comfy chairs all day!

Thank god this comment was made at the end of the day on a Friday so that I only needed to sigh heavily and roll my eyes. "Taylor, how many times have you ever seen me sitting in the comfy chair?" "None. But I'm going to be a liberian and I'm going to just sit in the comfy chairs all day." At least she has a dream, right? All of my kids and some of my colleagues are amazed at the thought that you would need a Masters degree to do my job. Not that I'm arguing that my two years in grad school were completely necessary for this babysitting, book ordering, and bossing around students gig I have. But I just don't find myself teaching the kiddies Boolean logic when Google does it effortlessly for them. I do find myself looking back through all of my class notes looking for the unit that covered sitting in comfy chairs all day. I think Taylor's onto something good.

Are you like, a teacher or something?

I celebrated my 6 month anniversary of working at Lyndon Institute by being asked if I was, like, a teacher or something. I asked the kid why he thought I was here every day-- he thought I was an intern. I reassured him that the only reason I was still here was because I was getting paid to show up every day. Obviously, the impact I've made on my kids here is truly staggering.