Each fall since 2012, with the exception of 2013, I have taught an adjunct course for Walters State Community College. The first year I taught a writing course, but the Tennessee Board of Regents changed the criteria, and I am no longer qualified to teach writing at the community college level. It seems almost ironic that I could write a dissertation for a doctoral program, the equivalent of a publishable research book, and not be qualified to teach writing to a college freshman.
Nevertheless, I continue to meet the qualifications for teaching reading at the community college level. I am currently teaching my ninth reading class. The course has changed at least three times during the past decade, and each year has its new experiences. I have taught both on campus and currently, as a direct result of COVID and its after effects, I am teaching online.
Each class has its own personality. There was one semester that I taught two courses, one on Monday evening and another on Tuesday. It was practically impossible to get the Monday class to participate orally at all, and it was equally as difficult to get the Tuesday class to pay attention to any teaching at all. Most classes fall somewhere in the middle. One of the most interesting classes I taught had some older students who had enrolled in college in mid-life. Naturally, these students were consistently interested in obtaining a sound education.
In my current class, the master schedule has activities that surround F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I had never read this book until teaching this course, and it was a literary journey not only for most of my students but also for me. One of the interesting things about the book is the symbolism of a green light across the shore. For nine weeks, a week to correspond with each chapter in the book, students were required to complete a “Reader’s Log”. One section of the assignment asked students to select what they considered to be “Beautiful Writing”. Each student selected what s/he considered to be her/his favorite quote from the chapter and explain why.
One of my students, Megann Duncan, gave me verbal permission to share with you, Dear Reader, her selected quote and why she chose it. Megann’s quote was from Chapter 4: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.” Following is her explanation of why she chose this as an example of beautiful writing.

I think this quote is beautiful and holds a lot of truth to it. The pursued are people who have gotten to where they want to go. The pursuing are the people who are trying to get there. The busy are the ones who don't want to be anywhere specific. They are just trying to keep busy until they figure it out. Tired is exactly what these people are. They have tried everything and just can't seem to grasp the future they want, so they just give up. I am the pursuing. Although, some days I feel like the tired, I just can’t give up. Not yet anyway.

Megan’s explanation caused me to examine my own and other’s lives. Megan says the “pursued” are the people who have gotten to where they want to go. Perhaps they are perused by others because others want to achieve the sense of accomplishment the pursued have reached. I know in life there are no absolutes, but almost everyone has someone who admires her/his accomplishments, someone to whom s/he is a role model. How humbling it is when a person is granted this rare and great privilege to serve as a beacon across the shore to the lives of others. It is not a bad thing, in my opinion, to always be the pursued, striving throughout life to pursue the epitome of success that always lies just out of reach of the fingertips.
Next, Megann points out that those looking up to the pursued are the “pursuing”. I have never reached the place in life that I cannot find someone who has qualities that I would like to emulate, who has reached a level to which I also aspire. These people are identified by answering questions such as, “If I could be anybody else in the world I would choose ___,” or “If I needed to talk to someone about a certain situation I would choose ____.” I have been so blessed in life that I can think of at least ten people whose names could fill these blanks for me.
And then there are the “busy”. There is nothing wrong with being busy. It was President Theodore Roosevelt who said, “No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” (Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/30028-no-man-needs-sympathy-because-he…, Retrieved November 22, 2021). Megann, however, speaks of a different kind of business, the kind that is written of in a song “Barren Busyness”, once performed by the McKameys. It reminds me of the old television commercial of the baker who sleepily stumbled through life muttering, “Got to make the donuts.” It also reminds me of those who leave high school and declare their major “undecided”. There is nothing wrong with being undecided when you are eighteen, though if one remains undecided throughout life there is a problem. Such people Megann titled the “tired”, those who have tried everything and found it as the writer of Ecclesiastes in the Scripture, “vanity”. Work is fine, but work simply for the sake of work, with no goal in mind, is in vain. Such work, without a long-term purpose in view, is futile, joyless. People who do this burn themselves out, reaping little joy for themselves and leaving little behind for the pursuing to seek. Life is too short for the person who lives longest to endure without joy.
Megann terms herself as the “pursuing”. She notes that some days she feels tired, as do we all, but optimistically notes that she can’t give up, not yet anyway. This young lady has a goal in mind for her future. I applaud her. The question for us, Dear Readers, is this—are we the “pursuing”, the “pursued”, the “busy”, or the “tired”? In some cases I am still “pursuing”, though I hope there are some who see enough worth in me to consider “pursuing” me worthwhile. I hope that when Megann reaches my ripe old age of fifty-six and even beyond that she has “pursued” and achieved many of her goals, is being “pursued” as a role model by others, is not “tired”, but is still “pursuing” for something finer just beyond the sunset of life’s day. I hope she never tires of this in her life’s journey.
Thank you, Megann, for finding your own personal light in Gatsby, and allowing me to share your insight with others through the printed word. Thank you for sharing that light and helping me realize that though I’ve rested under a few streetlamps along the way, the light in my home window awaits. My wish for each of you, Dear Readers, is that you find the warm glow awaiting your eternal destiny.
I leave you with a thought from my email world: Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.