149-10-08-2010

Human Kindness Journeys can be “Good” Scary!

By W. Owen Thornton

In eight days my Masters Candidacy year at Sir Wilfred Laurier University, in the field of philosophy, will begin.  I’m beside myself.  I’m looking forward to it.  I’m scared witless.  Again, I will be the old man of the class, attending university at age 48/49 with people approximately half that age.  What am I doing to myself?

I really am apprehensive.  I know I can do the work as I did four years of undergraduate work.  But Masters is supposed to be harder.  In addition I’ll be a teaching assistant (TA), so there will be more work in that respect as well.  Will I be good in the classroom?  Will I say and do the right things?  I have all sorts of practice in teaching but that mostly comes from courses of my own devising where I taught adults who WANTED to be in the class room.  What about being in a room with people who don’t know a thing about the subject matter … people who are taking a flier on philosophy?  Will I be able to excite them about the subject?  I believe I can, but I cannot be sure.  And how devastated will I feel should I fail even one of them?  (Fairly!)

Human Kindness actions, like taking yourself back to school (human kindness cannot just be about helping others, but must also be about helping your “self”!) can be “Good” scary.  Someone once said that a good risk is like safely passing a car on a two lane road.  When you can pass safely without frightening yourself, the person driving the car you are passing or any on-coming drivers, then it was a good pass.  That doesn’t mean that your adrenalin doesn’t rise, and that you don’t get butterflies in your stomach.  The trick with butterflies, I’m told, is not in making them go away (because you cannot do that when you’re taking human kindness risks) but it is in making them fly in formation so you can triumph when you need to. 

Another thing about “Good” Scary acts of human kindness is to look towards your motivation.  If it is genuine and good, it should ease some of your tension.  My motivation?  I have never enjoyed anything as much as sitting in a class room learning about philosophy.  I find the act energizing and fulfilling.  It is my hope, that as a TA that I will be able to excite every single student into entering a classical education of philosophy first, before they get their degree in whatever else they desire.  Philosophy teaches you how to think, man!  It teaches you how to create an effective argument.  It teaches you about the big things in life that we all wonder about, but rarely take time to think about them.  University should at least partially be about thinking big and not just about thinking about the career we start the day after our four-year degree is over.  We ALL know that once you’re career-bound going back to school is hard, should you ever want to try it (first-hand experience here).  So now is the time to rack up the student debt.  There will be a life-time of work to pay it back!

Lastly, it is ironic that I am entering my Masters year because I went back to school in order to be a better writer and thinker in regards to writing the articles for this weblog!  In doing something for others (weblog), I found something for myself (philosophy).  So maybe that’s entirely unusual circle of good stuff should be a positive sign that I need not be as nervous as I genuinely feel. 

NOTES:

In the weeks to come, I will release articles 150 and 151.  I think, of all the 150 essays I have written for you, I have not printed a few of them.  Some just didn’t work out the way that I intended.  They were often too long, too windy or too complicated.  However, by essay 152 I will celebrate 150 total essay entries in www.thehumankindnessproject.com ‘s history.  I can’t believe I’ve been here as long as I have, writing things about human kindness all these years.

Last, in essays 150, and 151, I will right about tracking human kindness and creating human kindness clubs.  Part of where these two articles are heading is that if we do not tell others what we want, it is difficult for them to help us achieve our goals.  So I will state my goal here even if this idea appears selfish.  (It is not, for I encourage you to tell me what YOUR goals are so that I or someone else can help you along your journey!)  It is my great desire to become a doctoral candidate in the fall of 2011 at a regional university ranging from Toronto to Windsor in the discipline of philosophy.  My ultimate goal is to spend as much time as possible in small classrooms of 30 or fewer students teaching as much philosophy as I can between now and the time I die!  If there is anyone out there who thinks they can help me in this endeavor, contact me through my weblog and I will link up to you via one of my email accounts.  And whilst you are doing that for me, I will continue to do my best for others.

God Bless

Owen Thornton