Day 14 of Classes - the semester ends.

 Time to celebrate! The end is nigh!

Seriously, every student should celebrate the successful end of a semester. It is no small accomplishment. Semesters are fifteen intense weeks of learning, discovery, and demonstrating that you were present and awake for all of that.

Graduation is tomorrow for my student teachers. I'll be there in my Masters regalia, no doubt thinking ahead to graduation in May of 2026 when I will be able to wear my new Doctoral regalia to celebrate my students. (Yeah, I'm thinking less of my own pending graduation in favor of theirs, but I assure you, looking forward to the day that a colleague of mine drapes that hood over my shoulders is pretty exciting).

But I won't get ahead of myself. I have three spring semesters, two summers, and two fall semesters left before then. I know I will be a different person, having those years of study and growth behind me. One semester alone has left me different.

I did have some doubts in August. Had I made the right choice? Would I be able to balance classes, teaching, momming, spousing, and coping with chronic pain? Would I find the workload overwhelming? Would I actually like any of the people I would be in classes with for the next three years? Would the unexpected come along and thrown me off course?

That last one is still a possibility, but I can definitively say that I did make the right choice, that I handle the workload, that I can balance this new aspect of my life in with everything else. In some ways, I am more efficient than I have been in previous semesters. Knowing that I have my own reading for classes, and my own assignments to complete, I have been on top of grading in a way I rarely am. Teaching writing is wonderful, but I usually procrastinate when it comes to grading. Having so much more on my own To-Do list has made me work a bit harder in all areas of my life.

I joked in my application to this program that one of the reasons I wanted to get the degree was so I could finally stop telling students not to call me Dr. Hyson. I wrote it as a joke, but it was not entirely one. A fellow student presented on the toll contingency has on adjuncts. I almost passed over reading their poster because it was too real in some ways. It's like the way I can't watch scenes where characters severely injure their knees because I know that pain so well.

Will contingency go away after I add that three more letters after my name - Sarah Hyson, MS, MA, EdD? Nope, no guarantee there. Many, many adjuncts have their terminal degree. Some of them are teaching the courses in this doctoral program.

But the ceiling will disappear. I will be eligible for conversion to tenure-track, even if it never happens.