Present confusing, Future uncertain

Yesterday a colleague of mine at the college retired. She said she was happy to go. She seemed to accept the end of working life with some amount of relief. But I wonder what she plans to do with the endless hours that are now to follow.

I have been in this job now over eleven years and the way things are going, I can only see the resources of my brain being reduced to nothingness. Surprising, considering I am supposed to be in the academic profession. Here we are supposed to keep our minds alert, our imagination and intellect working full throttle. But such are the circumstances of the academic system that we are trapped in that being a teacher seems no more than the labourer's struggle for existence. And to think I came to this profession because I wanted to be a college teacher!

The academic session starts with a flurry of activity. We get to do some adminstrative work related to admissions. We get to do the paperwork of course. We have no say whatsoever regarding the quality of students we may admit or the number. That is decided by the powers that be in the governing of the institution. Education for all, the cry goes round the battlements and the field is set for the battle of the unions. Literacy for all is fair enough, but higher education for all is a bit of a misguided petition, particularly when I see around me students admitted who do not have the foggiest about what they wish to do with their lives. A degree, somehow, anyhow, with perhaps just the pass marks which does not equip them with any expertise. Moreover these young minds come in with the idea that teachers are their enemies, interested only in the pay packets they receive, not bothered about how much they should teach. There are of course the equivocating influences, some very much from among the teaching clan who are forwarding the interests of the poltitical parties they owe allegience to. In today's academics, politics is the thing. One-up manship is the order, with non-coperation and distrust going side by side. I came into this profession with the ideals that are no doubt old-fashioned now. So upset am I that I have begun to mistrust my own stance. I do my job just as a job. I learn nothing, I do nothing new. The travel to and from the college is sometimes inhumanly uncomfortable, the staff room politics is stifling. But I need the money, so I do my job. I also look forward to my retirement. But I wonder if I will have any ideas about how to pass the hours that I will finally have to myself. Will my imagination revive? Will my creativity revive? Will I remember how I loved to paint, or listen to music, or hang out with friends? Will I able to read books as I could once? The prospects are uncertain and a bit frightening.

Is this what God-gifted life is supposed to be reduced to?