{"id":1104,"date":"2009-01-05T20:05:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2009-01-05T20:05:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-05T20:05:00","slug":"another-reason-that-i-am-glad-i-stopped-teaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1104","title":{"rendered":"Another Reason that I am Glad I Stopped Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evanthia O. Rosati was in the English-teaching racket longer than I was, and she has heard it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whenever I am at a party or first introduced to anyone, I pray no one will mention my line of work. The party could be at full swing, music loud and the bass shaking the walls. I might be enjoying myself. Then someone says I teach English. All speaking stops as partiers adjust their vocabulary to English teacher level. The gentleman with the chip dip hanging off his cheek is now saying, “From whence I came\u2026.” . . . . Playful people become anxious adults once they become aware of the dreaded English teacher in their midst. In desperation, I yell out, “I don’t have a shrine to Shakespeare in my backyard.” (It’s in the side yard; why give away all my secrets?) It’s no use. The area clears anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

So true. These days I say I am a freelance book editor, which is at least partly true, and most people have no preconception about what I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evanthia O. Rosati was in the English-teaching racket longer than I was, and she has heard it all. Whenever I am at a party or first introduced to anyone, I pray no one will mention my line of work. The party could be at full swing, music loud and the bass shaking the walls. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[83,12],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-education","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-hO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2056,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2056","url_meta":{"origin":1104,"position":0},"title":"From Slate, America’s Two Literary Cultures","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This article on \"America's two distinct literary cultures\" (via University Diaries) touched me because I almost went down the Master of Fine Arts in writing road myself\u2014and of course I taught alongside people who had done so. After graduating from Reed College with what amounted to a BFA, I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":817,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=817","url_meta":{"origin":1104,"position":1},"title":"Where are the Irish-speakers–in Ireland?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Now and again among North American Pagans, I run into an earnest student of Gaelic.When M. and I honeymooned in Ireland (back when the Celtic Tiger was still a kitten), I learned to puzzle out the signage and to go through the door marked \"Fir.\"But outside of Co. Kerry, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=936","url_meta":{"origin":1104,"position":2},"title":"The Dream and the Job","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the dream last night I was at some kind of Protestant Christian youth camp, headed by the stereotypical big, extroverted, 30-something youth minister.A teenaged girl was supposed to be baptized, but the minister had to leave suddenly, so he asked me to baptize her. His request presented two problems:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teaching\"","block_context":{"text":"teaching","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teaching"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2574,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2574","url_meta":{"origin":1104,"position":3},"title":"The 4C’s: Still Lost in Theory-Land","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When I started teaching college writing classes (here meaning mainly rhetoric and composition) in the early 1990s,\u00a0 I attended the national Conference on College Composition and Communication at least three times at university (i.e. taxpayer) expense. One of them produced an early Letter from Hardscrabble Creek piece back when it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=267","url_meta":{"origin":1104,"position":4},"title":"H\u00e4xan Continuing our sporadic investigation\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 20, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"H\u00e4xan Continuing our sporadic investigation of cinematic paganism, M. and I watched H\u00e4xan (\"Witches\"), a 1922 silent Swedish film that is available subtitled in English as Witchcraft through the Ages. Released just before Margaret Murray swayed English-speaking readers with her \"survival of the Old Religion despite persecution\" theory, this film\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3572,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3572","url_meta":{"origin":1104,"position":5},"title":"Adjunct Teaching and the “Portfolio Life”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of a seasonal celebration of Imbolc \u2014 it's about creativity, right? \u2014 I took a day and cleaned my big home office desk. Took everything off the top, stained the scratches with Old English Scratch Cover, and then polished the mahogany-veneer top with paste wax for protection against\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}