2. What’s the dumbest thing I ever did? My day-to-day dumbness typically involves forgett
2. What’s the dumbest thing I ever did? My day-to-day dumbness typically involves forgetting that the laws of space-time and all the other natural laws always apply. Beyond a couple of stupid car wrecks and cooking mishaps, I am especially good at not realizing that I’m pl*nning to be in two different places doing two different things at once. Multiverse overlap, maybe. But the most consequential dumb thing I ever did is in a different category: My first teaching job after undergrad was a part-time junior high position that paid me almost literally no money and was eliminated after two years. I can’t remember how many interviews I had the following summer, but when I was offered a part-time hourly no-benefits community college writing center instructor job to start in the fall, I took it. And then, one afternoon shortly after that, my cordless landline phone rang, and it was the principal of a local high school offering me a bonafide tenure-track full-time high school teaching job that I turned down because I thought I had to because I had taken the other gig. I can still feel the surprise in the administrator’s voice; I can still feel the way my heart sank. So that was dumb. Dumb because I didn’t know better, dumb because I was following expectations that do not exist, dumb because it all could have been fixed with a phone call. It was truly a dumb kid move. The thing is, the no-joke entire rest of my adult life unfolded the way it did because I did not take that job. Nothing that I value most in the subsequent 25 years would have happened. So, whew. Thank goodness for dumb. -- source link
#things happen