My office is littered with artifacts collected across lifetimes of teaching and learning. A stuffed sausage from Lebanon, Pennsylvania. A horned and bespectacled mask I created in 6th grade art. A flat basketball signed by theatre kids. A portrait of Kurt Vonnegut created by an 11th grader. A signed picture of Eric Milton:
To Sam, All my best to you and yours, Eric Milton, 9.11.99.
A signed baseball from Ron Kittle:
Sam, Happy Birthday, R. Kittle.
Shoutout to the real ones who know who Eric Milton and Ron Kittle are. I hate that I just used the phrase shoutout to the real ones.
I’m packing up again. Moving five doors down the road to the department chair’s office. Things are always changing.
***
My former high school student and current friend Natalie helped me pack when I exchanged my classroom at Roseville Area High School for an office at Penn State Altoona. Natalie worked her way through the items I collected while teaching at Roseville. Each item was more surprising than the last.
“Is this a PlayStation 2?” she asked. It was.
“Are these melted batteries?” They were.
“Why do you have piles of rocks in this filing cabinet?”
There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than dreamt of in your philosophy.
I have one of Natalie’s knapsack in my filing cabinet. It contains data she collected when she served as my research assistant during my dissertation. A collection of journals, papers, and artifacts from another world.
I’m surrounded by an assortment of strange items. A note from the President of Iowa congratulating me on being named as an inspirational professor. A poster of the 2022 XL Improv Fest. A cactus. A fortune from a cookie that promised me I’d become an accomplished writer. Not a successful writer. Not a famous writer. An accomplished writer.
There are good explanations for the items that surround me. Not logical, but good. Things accumulate, and powerful talismans keep me company as I teach and learn. As I profess.
Some of these charms will travel down the hall with me to another office. Some will end up in the garbage. Once something is conjured, it doesn’t go away. But the things we conjure are always in flux. Transformation is a constant. Things are always changing.
***
I don’t have Natalie to help me pack this time. But there are student workers ready, willing, and able to haul my many lifetimes down the hallway.
I have two chairs, a couch, and a rug that will accompany me to the next office. It is good to have chairs, couches, and rugs in offices. Especially when the work you do involves teaching and learning. People encountering other people in the spirit of transformation is best cultivated in soft spaces. That is an opinion I’ve come to hold over my many lifetimes as a teacher and a learner.
Before leaving you here, I think you should see the mask I made in 6th grade. The image of my spectral head reflecting in the window, floating above the mask as I take a picture is, in a word, disturbing. Enjoy this work of art:
Samuel Jaye Tanner 