Diary of the Frustrated Literature Teacher Entry No. 3: Becoming a Bookseller (Final Entry?)

I never knew the day would come when I would look at a book and ask myself, “how much could I sell this?”

In all curiosity, I used to ask what’s the story? What is the idea? I would buy that book. Never mind if I really planned to read it. Never mind if forgot an item in the grocery or the entire grocery, I would spend hours browsing at a bookshop wondering, and eventually buying.

I buy books out of the need to sate my curiosity, now I buy books out of my need for money.

(I try to do both.)

Here is a brief background how we got here:

Last year, the whole bulk of my job consisted of admin work with only a single teaching load. Somehow, both of those responsibilities needed a legitimization of a title called a Master’s Degree. And to legitimize that degree, you need to finish a painful obstacle course called a “thesis”. I asked one of the very few in finishers in our program and she said, “I did nothing else”.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

And she repeated “I did nothing else, nothing else but the paper”

To write my thesis was one of big the reasons I quit my job with one big rule: I will do nothing else but the paper. No Job and no love life. That rule has proven itself disastrous because the time I thought I would take to finish writing the thesis has tripled! You can just imagine how ill-prepared I was financially for it.  Since then, I have been disobeying my own rule.

Working and loving not out only out of circumstance but also out of choice.

Because, while finishing my Master’s degree might seem to be the top priority(so I could go back to teaching) with all else being only instrumental to it, the Master’s degree is also only instrumental to one thing – making a living, and making  living and life worthwhile.

I sold my books out of need, but eventually for better or for worse, I started to sell books out of want.

I may be enjoying the whole ordeal. Not only because I found doing business to be strangely satisfying but also because selling books is somehow still in line with what I wanted to do as a literature teacher.

When I taught literature I realized that regardless of the success of each lesson and each class, regardless whether we had the “oh!” and “aha” moments after reading or even writing literature all will be in vain if we cannot have those moments outside the classroom.

I wanted to inspire and instill in my students the habit of reading and writing along with all the joys and pains that follow. It’s a prerequisite before we even expect them to be critical whether to the advancement of a profession or art or in the realm of social action.

When we sell books, we do not just help the finder find what they are looking for(thus we might be encouraging more reading) we are also helping the lost be found again. The book lying there gathering dust might be my ornament, but to someone it could be the book they have been wanting to read. The writer of that book may have found a new fan (thus we could be encouraging more writing.)

I believe that a large gamut of teaching literature is how to get outside of the textbook and point the student to a myriad of other stories - other ways of reading and writing, or if the student is already on to something pointing them 

deeper 

into 

the 

abyss. 

P.S. (no need to read this, it may be just a rant)

Is this the final entry of the frustrated literature teacher?

It was always hard to justify the teaching of literature, most of the time it was seen as only instrumental to the teaching of language especially now that the shift is towards skill-based competencies.

Moreover, when I started teaching, we only needed a bachelor’s degree. Now teachers need a master’s degree, if that is not enough to make you a teacher, you will also need an official licence, and to take that exam, you need to have legitimately finished courses or at least units in education. Time will come when a school will only be called legit if all of its teachers are PHDs and the difference between those holders of doctorates would be how many theses or papers they have published or presented. Is there another profession that is more insecure that it continually checks itself? (more on what it “knows” and not how it performs – pedagogy). 

Add the amount of paper work that teachers are required to do on a daily basis and the demand to be prim and proper all the time. It seems that this profession could suck the life out of you as it did for many.

I really hope to finish my masters no matter how hard the thesis is, but it could be possible that after I did, IF I did, the reality for many “Masters” of Literature is that they end up teaching grammar and studying again for a doctorate degree. There is no rest for the wicked.

BUT on the BRIGHT side. There is money in education. Scholarships and grants are everywhere. Salaries of public teachers are becoming competitive as do some private ones.  And the joys and rewards of teaching are legion and I feel no need to put them here.  Moreover, the academe still offers one of most lucrative locations to dig for knowledge.

I remain hopeful. yala yala