I’ve navigated the teaching profession intuitively, always gravitating to what I sensed were voids in the system that, more often than not, compromised students. My rewards have not been monetary, nor have there been accolades showered on me – a special chair, a title, the such and such professor of. No. I’m nowhere near a think tank and the leisured life of, well, thinking and writing. None of this has happened. Mine has been a bumpy road – humbling in many respects. Some might even say I live on the boundaries of academe, shunning careerism – publishing in obscure journals, writing unreadable books, clawing up the expected ladder to obscurity. I’ve done none of it. I’ve focused on students instead – and there’s a price to pay for that. My rewards for this are found in the objects students have given me over the years and that occupy the…