Correspondence 11/20/06: 'reason statement' through correspondence (rough)

My Dear Friend,

What you’ve heard is true. After all this time plodding around half of the country exploring such different jobs and communities, it’s time to return to an educational community. I do believe I’ve figured out what more I want from my formal education. It’s what I’ve been exploring most of my life, but under different titles: teacher, professor, manager, counselor, facilitator, supervisor... It’s simple, really. Resource.
For four years at The College of Wooster, I received Wooster’s College Scholar award and an Abbot Labs scholarship through the National Merit Scholarship program. It was quite freeing; those awards gave me the chance to attend a small liberal arts school in a way that few people do, without too many worries about money or expectation. They were resources for me to become a well-rounded student. Only these three years later, it seems, do I fully appreciate how that exploratory attitude I was able to embrace has shaped my future. It’s one I’m constantly thankful for.
Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t always been easy. Running a team of eight to fifteen associates at Panera through holiday lunch rushes didn’t happen without a few exploding plumbing fixtures and midday bakes of hundreds of bagels. And certainly, being a 24/7 mentor, parent, guidance counselor, coach, punching bag, cheerleader, and taxi service for roughly twenty-five high school boys had some hitches (including, again, exploding plumbing).
I understand now that both communities gained the most from me when I was able to successfully show them the road to their destination, even if that destination was different from the one they thought they’d set out to, and even if the road took them a long, scenic route. Those jobs, like the tutoring I did at Wooster and the University of Kentucky, and like the teaching and professorial careers I dreamed of when I was younger, were mostly about being a reliable guide for people who depended on me.
I have a - possibly naive - idea of libraries as the last great bastians of public knowledge. Higher education prices continue to rise, community colleges offer a limited selection of topics. Libraries generally require an envelope with a stamp and your name on it. With some fortitude you can learn to fix your own car, base your business dealings on successful peace treaties or Sun Tzu’s treatise, become an expert on fourteenth century Chinese poetry, keep your plumbing from exploding. I describe the best possible scenario, I realize, but that seems to be the only thing to strive for.
So I’d like to try. I volunteered at the public library for four or five months down in Durham before we had the chance to get back to home, the midwest. Nancy Grace, our dear very first Wooster English professor, and Michael Beery, my hall director and general Renaissance man, have agreed - it seems - that this is a valid path for me. They’re working on letters of recommendation, perhaps at the very moment I write these words to you. They’re continuing to act as resources to me, which, I’m apparently starting to figure out, is what the world’s all about.
I have yet to determine whether the purity of my ‘naive fantasy’ rests in a public library, or the public library that might be forming in an online way. I see the reality, most likely, as a combination of the two, and I see that fantasy of mine as a seamless melding of their strengths over their weaknesses. Most importantly, I see the necessity for guides in both places, and I see myself as one.
I hope this letter finds you well, and if there’s anything I can do for you... well, you know.

As ever,

T