Yes, it is all worth it.

Here is the latest reason, which is an excerpt from an email from an alum:

Thank you for teaching classes that make people aware of the world around them, I truly believe that your classes were the most important classes that I took at Western Oregon.

Isn't such an email a wonderful way to start a Monday?

I'm Going to Start Living Like a Mystic
By Edward Hirsch

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater 
and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall. 

The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field, 
each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering. 

Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies 
are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation. 

I will examine their leaves as pages in a text 
and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter. 

I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel 
and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia. 

I shall begin scouring the sky for signs 
as if my whole future were constellated upon it. 

I will walk home alone with the deep alone, 
a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.