More Confessions From an Educated Fool

I took 40 years to come full circle as a writer, and I am a fool for taking so long

Donald Earl Collins
6 min readAug 2, 2021
Me and my receding hairline, May 22, 2020 (Donald Earl Collins)

This is the first of a series of essays and posts that I am doing this month about my journey as a writer, an educator, and a fool over the past four decades, simultaneously between Medium and my blog. I hope to educate, to entertain, to make people laugh and cry laughing, but (hopefully) not to feel too sorry for me. I am who I am, a work still in progress, even as my knees and my neck ache, even as my mind and spirit are exhausted. Still, I want to fly. “Ain’t that crazy?,” to quote music artist Seal, this as his song“Crazy” turns 30 this week.

Serving as a contingent faculty member at two different universities with few benefits, few avenues for promotion, and having lived through one obsequious toad for a supervisor after another year after year? This was not how I imagined my life would end up by the time I reached middle age. I didn’t even think I’d make it to 30 when I was a fourteen-year-old, so there’s that. But when I was 11 in 1981, I did discover my first true calling. I wanted to be a writer, what kind of a writer, I wasn’t sure. But after two years of reading World Book Encyclopedia and more than 40 college-level or higher books on World War II — mostly by British authors — I was ready to write…

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Donald Earl Collins
Donald Earl Collins

Written by Donald Earl Collins

Freelancer via @washingtonpost | @TheAtlantic |@AJEnglish | @Guardian; American Univ. & UMUC history prof. Invite me to write/speak: donaldearlcollins@gmail.com