Jeremy Trabue is an English instructor at Chemeketa. He’s a lover of all things literature and language, but his main course subjects range from poetry to introductory composition skills. With Jeremy, there’s always something new and exciting to learn, but for now take a moment to learn about him in this week’s edition of Eye of The Storm.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your interest in English and teaching.

A: I never planned to be a teacher, even in graduate school that was never my intention at all. I always loved reading, I was a precocious reader…so from that point of view, it seems like a natural fit to be an English teacher, but definitely not. I was an extremely indifferent high school student, B’s get degrees, as they say. I wasn’t even sure I was going to go to college, I was about 80% sure I was going to join the navy. Through a series of misadventures, I ended up going to this little liberal arts school that had this international focus. I spent my sophomore year in Nepal, living in a little village, and none of that made me want to be a teacher at all. I actually seethed upon this idea that I was going to be a therapist, so I started taking psychology electives [and] I found it really interesting. I finished my psych degree, but one of the things that happened to me while I was living in Nepal was that I started writing poetry, it was like a way to process my experiences. And in grad school, I was writing a lot more, I was starting to send poems out. Anyways, in my last year of my psych degree, I won a minor contest and my poem got published and I had won a prize that went toward my tuition. Clearly, poetry was calling to my heart a lot more. [But] for various reasons, I finished my psych degree and immediately enrolled in the English graduate program.

I was thinking, “Okay, the career path here is like publishing and editing.” So I did many internships… worked on two scholarly journals and I was the editor of a literary magazine. Still not thinking about teaching at all. I’m about to graduate, I walk into the office, and I’m trying to sweet talk the secretary into letting me use the xerox machine to make resumes. The chairman of the department comes in and says, “So-and-so just quit, classes start in a week, who’s gonna teach this night class out at the extension campus?” And I said, “I need a job. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything, I’ll go out there and mop the floors if you want.” And that was it. I loved it, I found I really liked teaching and [that] it was super energizing. 

Q: How did you end up at Chemeketa?

A: My wife and I had a plan, which was we wanted to move somewhere we wanted to live, which was Portland, and then we were gonna look for a job. I was just very lucky when I got this job at Chemeketa. That was in 2003…five people retired from Chemeketa that year…I’m sure if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have gotten this job.

Q: What do you love most about being an English instructor at Chemeketa?

A: I wouldn’t trade this job for a four-year R1 school because I love teaching, I don’t love scholarship; teaching is where it’s at. This population of students is so much more interesting. When I taught at a four-year school my first two years, it was room after room of entitled 18-year-olds who think they know everything—it got so boring so fast. So that’s the number one thing I love about Chemeketa is the sort of diversity of the student body. I could have a retiree, a gifted 14-year-old, people who are in recovery, people who just got out of prison, people who just got out of the military [and] very bright 18-year-olds that are trying to save money all in the same class. I just love to have that whole spectrum of human beings to interact with, and it makes teaching such a rich and interesting experience. It’s cliche, but it’s the moment when you just see the light go on in a student and they get it, you can visibly see their mind expand and it’s just so rewarding. 

Q: When you were a college student, was there anything that you struggled with? If so, how did you persevere through it?

A: Of course, the hardest thing was all the anxiety about, “what am I gonna be when I grow up? Are these student loans ever going to get paid off? Is there any economic return here?” But setting that aside, the actual student experience, it took me a while to break into…the conventions of the discourse community. The world of English literature studies, once you get beyond the introductory level, it’s its own weird cult. They have their own rituals, secret handshakes and passwords—their own way of communicating. You have to really get into a certain way of using sources and building arguments based on this combination of secondary and primary sources. So that was kind of hard, especially for me because I didn’t have the undergraduate degree, so I missed out on all that kind of training. I didn’t even know what MLA format was until I got to graduate school. So in many ways those kinds of particular conventions of this community, it took me a while to get used to them and learn to kind of speak the language and behave in the way they expected people to behave. 

Q: What would you like to say to students who are thinking about pursuing a degree in English?

A: Don’t go into this thinking that you’ll be stamped “bachelor’s degree” and then be economically successful; have a realistic plan. If you’ve got a vision, “I want to be a language arts teacher, I want to be a professor, I want to be an instructor at a community college,” I would never discourage somebody from pursuing that vision. I mean, somebody’s gotta get those jobs, it might as well be you. But if you’re just like I was, and you’re like, “Oh, I like pretty stories and books. These classes are fun, I guess I’ll be an English major.” Don’t do that unless you’re rich. Just really think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.