Scrolling to Student

By Julia Stuble,
Graduate Student

I have recently come to terms with being a full-time student. During my undergraduate days, being a student became a four-year transitional stage. In the beginning I was happy to be a student, though I was always facing a golden light at the end of the student tunnel. By year four, I had a mini-rebellion against my own ambitions, and the standards set upon me. I moved graduate school back a few years, skipped the graduation ceremony and headed for a construction job.

It was a typical no-longer-a-student, but not part of the corporate workforce, post-college job. It challenged my biceps, shoulders and Spanish language skills, but I happily wielded the drill and denied that I was still a student, and learning everyday.

That job lasted all of three weeks, as my ambitions and curiosity denied the coup of just “take some time off.” I couldn’t do that, but I still was not ready to be a student again.

So I happily took a job at a small-town newspaper, diving – or so I idealistically believed – into a hotbed of environmental issues and dissolving them all with probing interviews. Realistically, I knew I was learning as I went, thus qualifying as a student, but I had a paycheck darn it! When polled by an online magazine subscription I happily scrolled to the J’s – journalist – and reveled in finally being able to mark something other than student. I was, as the cliché goes, in the real world.

Well, this past weekend, the truth came crashing down. And this time, I happily embraced it.

While checking out at an arts store in Jackson, the proprietor gave me my total, prefacing it with “With your student discount, that will be…”. Pleased, but wanting to fight age discrimination (do I look like a high schooler?) I asked him how he knew I was a student.

“In here, everyone’s a student,” he said with a transcendent smile. What an answer, I thought. What a great way to live.

I thought about that throughout the day, doing homework and other studenty things. And finally, signing up on the New York Times website to email an article, I was faced with an online poll. It asked for my income, my gender, my age…and finally, my occupation. I scrolled down the list, looking at the real jobs. Accountant, analyst, architect, educator, lawyer/judge, military, researcher, service provider. I scrolled past them all, slowly imagining myself in those roles. In years past, when confronted with these polls (especially in high school) I loved to fantasize and select the hottest ones. Signing up for a Hotmail account, I made myself a CFO with a “150,000 or more” income in the biotech industry. But this time, I chose the “25,000 or less” income button. And on the occupation? Finally, I scrolled to the one I wanted. Student, it said plainly. It was not romantic. It did not pay the bills. I highlighted it, and clicked. Yes, I’m a student.
And doing so, I decided I would always mark student. It is obvious at the Teton Science School that I learn new things everyday. Challenges are rampant; balancing homework and teaching, fun and learning, students’ demands and needs with lesson plans. Teaching is a completely new field; but so was journalism, I now know. I was a student then too (perhaps a trifle wealthier student). And at the construction site? I was a student there – learning how to put up siding, and how to communicate with my coworkers.

Even driving home, listening to NPR, I’m a student. Walking the dog in the fading fall light, I’m a student. Staring at my bookshelves – justified before as stemming from a love of reading – I now see it as a shelf of teachers. Standing in front of a group of 9th grade girls, as I did last week during the Young Women in Science residential education program? They thought of me as an instructor, but all I was doing was providing a framework for their learning. And really, all I was doing was learning from them.

“In here, everyone’s a student,” still reverberates in my mind. We are all students, and finally, I am completely happy to be so.