My department is moving this summer, which means I need to pack up my office to move to a smaller office. I had a spare hour today between meetings and tore through the filing cabinets. Turns out I have stacks of student binders that go back to 2005, when I started this job. I actually had a stack of stuff from the previous job, probably because that first year here I still had some necessary connections there (incompletes and such). But I actually found grade books from when I was in grad school!
Now I will admit to being a compulsive paper saver. That method has actually served me well, as I have used those old notes on more than one recent occasion. And they're filed clearly enough that I know where to find them. But saving grade books from 1995-2001 seems pretty stupid; I have never, not once, needed to look up anything in there. I have never written a letter of recommendation for any of those former students. So why was it so hard to throw them out? Hard enough, actually, that I couldn't bring myself to do it today, although I know I will not make a space for them in the boxes that are moving across campus.
I did manage to recycle a collection of short stories used by my high school English class. Why I've saved that for all this time I have no idea; I could easily get a copy of any of the stories in there, if it isn't in any of the more recent anthologies that get sent my way on a routine basis from textbook publishers.
Still, I feel like I'm throwing away all these older versions of myself. Undergraduate gwinne who wore leotards and tights under most clothes to English classes; early graduate school gwinne with dyed black hair and too much flannel; late graduate school gwinne of the black suits; assistant professor gwinne of too many miscarriages and a lot of melodrama. And what's left will be grown up Associate Professor gwinne, with a tiny office and a lot of memories in filing cabinets. It's a weird weird process with a lot of papercuts.
I am a paper hoarder as well. That transformation into modern Gwinne has history. I would find throwing those things out hard, indeed.
ReplyDeleteI am applauding the most recent incarnation and the world of HAVING a door between you and the world (or at least the students). It sounds very big on that timeline of events, papercuts or no.
Oh yeah. When I recently got the file cabinet FINALLY installed in my home office, I found stories I wrote when I was in HIGH SCHOOL. I found things that had been printed in my college's computer lab, back when people (normal, broke college students, anyway) didn't HAVE personal computers. It was like going back in time, reading some of those stories and novel fragments. I've been hauling those all around the country for 20 years and feeling somewhat abashed at my inability to throw anything away, but it made for a wonderfully nostalgic afternoon, sorting through it all again...
ReplyDeleteI'm much the same way -- just ask my mother, who is the keeper of many boxes of paper (NYC apartments do not allow for too much hoarding if they are to remain habitable). It sounds like a really amazing way to spend the day -- I think it is wonderful that you got to go back and revisit the past, good and bad, and see how far you have come.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely understand this. Even worse is getting rid of books. While I haven't saved TOO much paper (I have tried to winnow it down each time I've moved, which has been a lot of times), I am a book-saver. And it pains me to rid myself of those former selves. I think, "but maybe I will NEED that some day! In that particular form!"
ReplyDeleteBe kind to the paper cuts.
S, I think the only reason I don't have papers from high school is that they drowned in a flood in my mother's basement. I do still have all my undergrad papers, though.
ReplyDeleteAnd J...absolutely!!! I mark up my books, and I'm guessing as a former English lit-type you do, too, and how to part with those treasures? Free desk copies are relatively easy to recycle or give away, though!