Tinkering

This evening I will attend my last class for the semester. It is somewhat of a momentous event, because it also marks the end of my first year as a doctoral student. It is hard for me to believe that nine months ago I moved to Lansing, and that 8 and a half months ago I started this program. Obviously, I have learned a lot of things since coming to Michigan, both about the place and about myself. One thing, however, stands out a little more than other things, and although it isn't something I've learned so much about myself as something I have come to understand better. I have always been a "tinkerer." When I start work on something I enjoy, I can keep going back to it and working on it. Even if I don't enjoy it so much, if it gives me some sense of intellectual or artistic food, I'll still continue to tinker with it, to figure it out, to take it all apart and put it back together. Obviously, this works in my favor as a student.

For this reason, I have dabbled a lot in a lot of different things and you can tell this by my varied career. A few weeks ago I was chatting with a woman who runs a fellowship program that I will join next year, and I had sent her my shortened version of my resume. She asked what was going on during the 8 year gap of when I graduated with a BA and when I started my resume history. I gave her another shortened version of "art instructor, started a summer program in a small town for art and science, worked at a small book press as a bookbinder, did some substitute teaching on the sly because I'm not certified, joined Americorps, traveled around the country by train for 6 months, worked as a visual merchandiser and fluffed pillows and moved sofas for a living, blah blah blah." I didn't really think much of it but she laughed and her eyes got big and she said, "You've done a lot!!" I hadn't ever thought of it that way, because until I started a more linear career in the nonprofit sector my life did seem a little untethered, but also natural.

It would have been naive of me to expect that I could continue on in my career in nonprofit. I tried to stick to it, and climb that ladder as it were. However I jumped jobs every 2 years because I was restless. I liked the chaos of things and putting order to them and once that was done, I would grow bored or frustrated and then find another place that hired me to clean house. Thus, I finally bent to my desire to tinker in a field I knew I belonged, and that brought me to Lansing. Now that I'm here, I understand more fully how well I can tinker. I tinker all the time, reading, writing, talking through ideas, listening. Sometimes I get tired, sure, but I'm usually pretty content - even joyful sometimes - at all the tinkering I get to do. Even when there is no useful effect of my tinkering, and I don't always know what it is for or what it will become, that I can try to make little improvements to my ideas and flesh them out is truly enjoyable.