One of my favorite games, growing up, was Beleaguered Librarian.

Here’s something you don’t know about me: I enjoy doing my taxes.

I rarely get anything back from them, so that’s hardly the reason why – there’s no monetary motivation behind it – it’s just that, deep down, I really like filling in things, forms, blanks. I like putting things where they go, seeing them meld into the template of the 1040EZ, or the W-2, or the New York Times Crossword.

I like it because when things fit, I’m pleased.

I like it because, when it’s all said and done, it looks neat.

And I like it because it looks intimidating:  To think that all the hard work you’ve done throughout the year can be reduced to nothing more than a small collection of rows and shaded squares, all neatly labeled and cross-referenced by the IRS and national bank chains.

There’s a part of me, a part I do admit mostly trying to deny, though, that craves organization.

It’s true. 

One of my favorite games to play growing up was Beleaguered Librarian, for crying out loud.

And before you ask, here’s how it’s played: Melinda, a favorite childhood friend, and I would spend hours in her house, going room-to-room collecting all the books we could find; they’d been mis-shelved, obviously. We’d have to settle down at the kitchen table (the office), and take out all the postcard-sized bits of paper we’d previously put inside them (carrying the title of each book and Return Date, clearly legible), complain (quietly) how time-consuming doing this was and gossip about how rude it was that “most of the people who come in here don’t even bother to look at the return date, anyway,” which meant we would have to charge them overdue fees.

Groan.

This, of course, required more paperwork: more pieces of paper cut checkbook-size, which would then have to been written out with the amount of the fee expected. This would have to wait until we’d re-shelved the books, obviously, because “so few people who come in here put the books back, they just leave them lying anywhere.”

No one ever came to our library.

And yet, there was always a ridiculous load of work to be done. Before you knew it, a whole Sunday afternoon had passed.

I’m not even sure there’s room in the definition of Nerd to describe this game, but play it we did. And we loved it. And I don’t think we’re one bit ashamed about loving it either.

It satisfied a deep need I had for order, as a child. Yet, I rebel against this same sense of order today, for reasons I cannot explain fully—though in part, I have more than an ample girth of opinion.

I think it has something to do with a fear of conformity, with the surrendering of our uniqueness to the One-Size-Fill-in-the-Blank Philosophy of capitalism.

They force us to become One by not letting us be one, you know?

Our entire careers, taxes, insurance claims, retirements, bank accounts, you name it, are all sitting, in duplicate, stuffed in large, collective boxes, stored in back rooms, looking exactly the same to the naked eye, from the shelf…when the naked eye cares to look.

You have no Name with these constructs, just a Number. And the back room itself is a last-resort, at that. The glory-holder of anonymity these days is without doubt, the computer.

Heck, it’s like that at my school, and we’re in the middle of somewhere even Verizon can’t find.

Half the people I teach, when it’s time to record grades, are faceless, student ID numbers scrolling across my computer screen. There’s very little humanity in it…but it certainly is neat, contained, and orderly, which is something of an improvement over, ahem, humanity.

And in attempt at appeasing Big Brother: I kinda like it, I have to say.

No, now, I’m not saying I don’t want to know or care about my students, I certainly do, but even more than that, I like ease and convenience. I like knowing that I can pull these obligations out of my own mind and dump them in some software whose sole purpose is not to care; a problem of mine, personally, is caring a little too much.

That’s got to stop, to some degree. Especially as I get ready to do two things: teach online and bravely face this mammoth of a Program Review Report, due by Friday (I’ve just been told).

Online teaching has its own challenges: The severity of setting a deadline is hard to manage in the physical classroom. When it’s online, however, either you do it by 3:00 PM on Thursday, or you don’t do it at all, e.g. I’m OK with that, as a professor, even if I’m more than a little bothered by it, as a human, but then, I’m not paid to be a human.

Touché, huh.

It will take some adjustment, I know.  Doing your taxes still requires intimacy. Teaching students whom you’ll never meet doesn’t.  That’s the part that I will struggle with, even against the alleged ease of online education.

Because starting next semester, my words are going to count for a hell of a lot more than they do right now.

This mammoth Program Review is a different devil. I’ve only been here for four months; this report doesn’t care, though. I’m now, among other things, responsible for figuring out who spent what monies badly over the last three years…and Why.  I’ve been staring at this thick, multipage document all morning; I may or may not have had a stroke around 11:38. I have little to no intimacy for it. Scratch that: I hate the damn thing.

But, considering that, a couple of things come to mind: either I can be afraid of it, of losing myself to and behind a computer screen (who respects a computer screen?), or I can take pride in filling out these forms, tooting my horn whatever note comes out, and creating lessons and assignments and syllabi that are creative and challenging – on my own terms.

I’ve chosen to re-institute my sense of pride in the latter; it’s less unknown.

I’m intent on making my words matter. On the shelf in that back room, I might look like any other overindulgent Rolodex entry; on the bank’s computer or the hospital’s, I might be nothing more than a statistic or a blood count, but when you pull my name out of the piles to read about my medical history or educational philosophy, I better make sure what I’ve written down can stand alone…and speak for itself.

(People do still read, right)?  

No, rather than be upset by the New World Order, I plan on going down (at least on paper) in a blaze of glory. I’m determined to be a “good read,” if I’m nothing else from now ‘til kingdom come.

Which, according to some popular opinion, is December 20, 2012.

…and I can last another two years, easy.

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