I was sifting through piles and piles of student work today in an effort to get through report card grading (which, by the way, is HARD), when I came across an activity I had my kids do the first week of school about what they wanted to be when they grew up and who their heroes were.
As children, we think a lot about growing up. Not only are we constantly asked what we want to be when this happens, but we pick our role models and idols from those who have already reached that stage. Sports stars, music icons, community heroes- we look at those older than us and decide who we want to be like. We idealize these people. I remember teachers, babysitters, neighbors who I thought could do nothing wrong. I see my kids with these same kinds of idols.
I also remember seeing these idols disappear before my eyes, after finding out someone smoked, or swore, or lied. People always wonder where the heroes of their youth went. All those idols we had fade and tarnish over time… or maybe we just grow up and realize that we were tricked. Idealism blinded us and convinced us of greatness where there was only mediocrity. We see the mistakes of our fathers, learn the faults of our mothers. We see the whole picture and find that the people we put on pedestals throughout our childhoods do not belong there. We learn that loving someone, looking up to someone, is more than finding a person surrounded by perfection or wrapped in light. We find our real heroes and our true loves in the ordinary light of day. They are people we can fight with, people we can talk to, people we can watch and criticize. But most of all, they are people who touch us and become a part of us. They are the people who can survive the harsh world of the real and the true and yet, somehow, remain good in spite of their faults.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
What You Don't Know About the President
During social studies, my kids were doing an activity where they had to describe and draw one of the duties of the President. I was making my rounds, seeing what they were doing, when I stopped at one of their desks.
Me- "Oh, now what's your picture of?"
Student- "Barack Obama saving the day." His picture showed him in a cape scooping people up... so cute!
Me- "Well, that's a good thing to draw! But it looks here like he's flying, and you know Barack Obama can't really fly in real life. He does save the day sometimes, but maybe you could show him doing that by making a speech or leading the troops."
Student- "He's not really flying. He's got a jetpack on."
Pause... me- "...a jetpack?"
Other student, nodding vigorously- "Uh huh! He has a jetpack."
Me- "That's really imaginative, but don't you think if Barack Obama had a jetpack, we would see it somewhere on the news? Or in a magazine?"
Student- "No. He keeps it in his secret lair."
Me- "His secret lair?"
Student- "Underneath the White House."
Nodding student- "Uh huh! It's true!"
This is what makes my days so so good sometimes.
Me- "Oh, now what's your picture of?"
Student- "Barack Obama saving the day." His picture showed him in a cape scooping people up... so cute!
Me- "Well, that's a good thing to draw! But it looks here like he's flying, and you know Barack Obama can't really fly in real life. He does save the day sometimes, but maybe you could show him doing that by making a speech or leading the troops."
Student- "He's not really flying. He's got a jetpack on."
Pause... me- "...a jetpack?"
Other student, nodding vigorously- "Uh huh! He has a jetpack."
Me- "That's really imaginative, but don't you think if Barack Obama had a jetpack, we would see it somewhere on the news? Or in a magazine?"
Student- "No. He keeps it in his secret lair."
Me- "His secret lair?"
Student- "Underneath the White House."
Nodding student- "Uh huh! It's true!"
This is what makes my days so so good sometimes.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
A Day Off
Today I went to this New Teacher workshop instead of going to school. My lit facilitator arranged the sub and everything, so it was essentially a little break from having my kiddies. As I was driving through probably one of the nicest sections of Charlotte, a few things dawned on me. And when I say dawned on me, I mean literally because it had been awhile since I had seen the sun in the morning.
There are some things I really don't like about teaching. See following list:
1) Getting up before 5 am. In the dark. In the cold. Yes, COLD. I know, I thought I moved to the south, but apparently it's going through a spell where it likes to FROST. IN THE SOUTH. What the heck.
2) The pressure... now, hear me out on this one. There is pressure at every job. There are things to be filed, paperwork to fill out, accounts to close, things to do... but these things will not vomit on your shoes or pee on your rug or give you swine flu because they want to whisper something in your ear at lunch and they sneezed instead. These things will not have their parents call you about their behavior. These things will not grow into real, functioning members of society who may continue to do things like vomit on people's shoes and pee on people's rugs if you do not stop and redirect them.
3) The inability to wear things that are fashionable or attractive. Please see the part about the pee and vomit.
But then I realized there are things I really like about teaching...
1) No monotony. Every day is different, for better or for worse. And when they're for better, it feels pretty good.
2) Kids are funny. I overheard one of my kids at lunch expressing a lot of enthusiasm for joining Boy Scouts because he would finally be able to "kill a bear." Another kid called me Mrs. Bologna. Another knows Beyonce's Single Ladies dance, but assures me she won't do the dirty part in school.
3) The kids... period. As much as all the work stinks and is stressful, at the end of the day it's pretty fulfilling to see a little kid walk out the door doing the trapezoid/hexagon dance instead of the Single Ladies Dance. It's fulfilling to see them learn how to read, or remember how to add, or become a better, more helpful person. Even if it's just a little, teeny tiny, still growing and learning person.
Short, and not well-written, but I thought I'd blog on it anyway.
There are some things I really don't like about teaching. See following list:
1) Getting up before 5 am. In the dark. In the cold. Yes, COLD. I know, I thought I moved to the south, but apparently it's going through a spell where it likes to FROST. IN THE SOUTH. What the heck.
2) The pressure... now, hear me out on this one. There is pressure at every job. There are things to be filed, paperwork to fill out, accounts to close, things to do... but these things will not vomit on your shoes or pee on your rug or give you swine flu because they want to whisper something in your ear at lunch and they sneezed instead. These things will not have their parents call you about their behavior. These things will not grow into real, functioning members of society who may continue to do things like vomit on people's shoes and pee on people's rugs if you do not stop and redirect them.
3) The inability to wear things that are fashionable or attractive. Please see the part about the pee and vomit.
But then I realized there are things I really like about teaching...
1) No monotony. Every day is different, for better or for worse. And when they're for better, it feels pretty good.
2) Kids are funny. I overheard one of my kids at lunch expressing a lot of enthusiasm for joining Boy Scouts because he would finally be able to "kill a bear." Another kid called me Mrs. Bologna. Another knows Beyonce's Single Ladies dance, but assures me she won't do the dirty part in school.
3) The kids... period. As much as all the work stinks and is stressful, at the end of the day it's pretty fulfilling to see a little kid walk out the door doing the trapezoid/hexagon dance instead of the Single Ladies Dance. It's fulfilling to see them learn how to read, or remember how to add, or become a better, more helpful person. Even if it's just a little, teeny tiny, still growing and learning person.
Short, and not well-written, but I thought I'd blog on it anyway.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Riding in Cars... Without a Clue
A lot of people don't know very much about cars. I am one of them. First of all, I'm not a very good driver. I can't see well and I have bad depth perception. As a result, I don't particularly like doing it. That, added to my lack of knowledge, lends itself to one clueless driver. My sister isn't much better. She's been known to pull hanging pieces from our cars because they don't look important.
Anyway, this week I was sitting in the Goodyear by my school, waiting for them to change the four BALD tires on my car. I was waiting for them to do the alignment and all that jazz thinking about how clueless I am. I can't change a tire, I can't check my oil, I barely know how to add windshield wiper fluid to my car. BUT, the one thing I do know how to do is pop the hood.
Whenever relatively common situations arise- your car isn't starting, a door that should be open is locked, you have a weird stomachache- there are certain "first response" reactions that every person has (especially when they don't really know what they're talking about). When a door is locked, that reaction is to jiggle the handle. I don't know about you, but very rarely has jiggling the handle opened a locked door. Still, it's the socially acceptable thing to do. Whenever you call someone and say, "Help, my door/cabinet/toilet flappy thing won't open" they will respond, "Well, did you jiggle the handle?" For stomachaches, it's going to the bathroom. You could be pregnant and going into labor, and if you told someone who was not aware of the whole pregnancy thing, they would probably answer with, "Maybe you should try going to the bathroom."
For cars, that response is to pop the hood. This one is funnier than those I just mentioned because popping the hood has absolutely NO effect on how your car is running. At least OCCASIONALLY going to the bathroom or jiggling the handle MIGHT do the job, but popping the hood (ONLY popping the hood) will not. Because it is so useless as a strategy to fix cars, of course it is the one that I employ first.
Just to reiterate, I know NOTHING about cars. You could tell me my car's rotary cuff was fractured and I'd believe you. You could tell me my gas tank was infested by flies who were laying eggs of mutant babies and I'd believe you. You could tell me that my license plate was slowing down my acceleration because of the angle it was screwed on and- yep- I'd believe you.
My sister is kind of the same way. Her calling card is to call my parents in the midst of whatever car catastrophe she is having, hoping that my dad's quick thinking will get her out of it. When we get together, it's even worse. We had to drive to Ohio over the summer to move her stuff back home and one of those things was her queen size mattress and box springs. We had about 300 feet of rope and my dad's truck, so we were set to get everything tied down and ready to go.
Big mistake, assuming that we could complete this task without messing up. I'm a pretty intelligent person, but tying knots is not one of my strengths. Combine that with my sister's stellar critical thinking skills (that was a jab, Kris) and you've got a recipe for disaster (aka an SUV getting destroyed by a mattress that flew off a truck with a New York license plate... that didn't really happen but it could have). Our strategy was to wrap the ropes around the little rope-holder things as many times as possible, taking extra safety measures of weaving that same rope through various other pieces of furniture, tying sporadic knots along the way. Our catch phrase was, "What are the odds that ALL these knots/tangles come undone at the same time?"
Needless to say, we ended up making it about an hour (about 20 miles) before turning around and coming back so that some former boy scout guy friend of hers could properly secure the mattress. This is after we were parked at the side of the road by an abandoned building, covered in mud and ropeburns, after my sister nearly got run over on the highway when she got out of the car to retrive the top that flew off one of her plastic storage bins, after a man in another truck looked at the leaning mattress and flapping tarp with a look of apocalyptic panic in his eyes.
Kristin's responses in these emergency situations is to call my father. Example: she ran out of gas at an intersection. "Dad, I have no gas and people are beeping at me." She saw something weird hanging out the bottom of our van on a road trip and pulled it off (as I said at the beginning of this post). "Dad, was that okay? Now the heat only works in the left side." She didn't have any money for a toll on one of the NY interstates. "Dad, what do I do?"
My response, on the other hand, is to pop the hood. I think that's a pretty common thing for people to do. The problem is that popping the hood is merely a step in LOOKING at what's inside the hood. The only thing I can say once I've completed that is, "Yup, there's an engine in there." Even that's a stretch, because engines and the inside of refrigerators probably look pretty similar. I just think it's funny how much people rely on those first common reactions when they hardly ever result in something productive happening.
Thankfully, I have my dad to take care of that stuff, to walk me through baby steps of figuring out what is wrong and then handing over his Goodyear credit card to get it fixed. If it were up to me, I'd be driving down the highway with no gas and the check engine light on, my sister in the passenger seat trying to pay tolls with Canadian dimes, and one of the tires completely missing off the back passenger axle.
Anyway, this week I was sitting in the Goodyear by my school, waiting for them to change the four BALD tires on my car. I was waiting for them to do the alignment and all that jazz thinking about how clueless I am. I can't change a tire, I can't check my oil, I barely know how to add windshield wiper fluid to my car. BUT, the one thing I do know how to do is pop the hood.
Whenever relatively common situations arise- your car isn't starting, a door that should be open is locked, you have a weird stomachache- there are certain "first response" reactions that every person has (especially when they don't really know what they're talking about). When a door is locked, that reaction is to jiggle the handle. I don't know about you, but very rarely has jiggling the handle opened a locked door. Still, it's the socially acceptable thing to do. Whenever you call someone and say, "Help, my door/cabinet/toilet flappy thing won't open" they will respond, "Well, did you jiggle the handle?" For stomachaches, it's going to the bathroom. You could be pregnant and going into labor, and if you told someone who was not aware of the whole pregnancy thing, they would probably answer with, "Maybe you should try going to the bathroom."
For cars, that response is to pop the hood. This one is funnier than those I just mentioned because popping the hood has absolutely NO effect on how your car is running. At least OCCASIONALLY going to the bathroom or jiggling the handle MIGHT do the job, but popping the hood (ONLY popping the hood) will not. Because it is so useless as a strategy to fix cars, of course it is the one that I employ first.
Just to reiterate, I know NOTHING about cars. You could tell me my car's rotary cuff was fractured and I'd believe you. You could tell me my gas tank was infested by flies who were laying eggs of mutant babies and I'd believe you. You could tell me that my license plate was slowing down my acceleration because of the angle it was screwed on and- yep- I'd believe you.
My sister is kind of the same way. Her calling card is to call my parents in the midst of whatever car catastrophe she is having, hoping that my dad's quick thinking will get her out of it. When we get together, it's even worse. We had to drive to Ohio over the summer to move her stuff back home and one of those things was her queen size mattress and box springs. We had about 300 feet of rope and my dad's truck, so we were set to get everything tied down and ready to go.
Big mistake, assuming that we could complete this task without messing up. I'm a pretty intelligent person, but tying knots is not one of my strengths. Combine that with my sister's stellar critical thinking skills (that was a jab, Kris) and you've got a recipe for disaster (aka an SUV getting destroyed by a mattress that flew off a truck with a New York license plate... that didn't really happen but it could have). Our strategy was to wrap the ropes around the little rope-holder things as many times as possible, taking extra safety measures of weaving that same rope through various other pieces of furniture, tying sporadic knots along the way. Our catch phrase was, "What are the odds that ALL these knots/tangles come undone at the same time?"
Needless to say, we ended up making it about an hour (about 20 miles) before turning around and coming back so that some former boy scout guy friend of hers could properly secure the mattress. This is after we were parked at the side of the road by an abandoned building, covered in mud and ropeburns, after my sister nearly got run over on the highway when she got out of the car to retrive the top that flew off one of her plastic storage bins, after a man in another truck looked at the leaning mattress and flapping tarp with a look of apocalyptic panic in his eyes.
Kristin's responses in these emergency situations is to call my father. Example: she ran out of gas at an intersection. "Dad, I have no gas and people are beeping at me." She saw something weird hanging out the bottom of our van on a road trip and pulled it off (as I said at the beginning of this post). "Dad, was that okay? Now the heat only works in the left side." She didn't have any money for a toll on one of the NY interstates. "Dad, what do I do?"
My response, on the other hand, is to pop the hood. I think that's a pretty common thing for people to do. The problem is that popping the hood is merely a step in LOOKING at what's inside the hood. The only thing I can say once I've completed that is, "Yup, there's an engine in there." Even that's a stretch, because engines and the inside of refrigerators probably look pretty similar. I just think it's funny how much people rely on those first common reactions when they hardly ever result in something productive happening.
Thankfully, I have my dad to take care of that stuff, to walk me through baby steps of figuring out what is wrong and then handing over his Goodyear credit card to get it fixed. If it were up to me, I'd be driving down the highway with no gas and the check engine light on, my sister in the passenger seat trying to pay tolls with Canadian dimes, and one of the tires completely missing off the back passenger axle.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Quarter Life Crises
As the typical Sunday night anxiety sets in (with me and all my roommates), I'm starting to wonder whether this anxiety is just connected to TFA or if it's something that all college graduates experience, a suffocating paranoia that our lives will be the same- miserable and hard- from this point forward. That maybe it never gets any better, that maybe we'll be worrying about money and jobs and relationships forever.
That's depressing.
I'm looking at the things stressing me out tonight, and of course teaching this week is occupying one of the top places on the list. But I'm actually in a good place to start this week. I'm planned, I know the things I need to get done and when they need to get done by (and I have time to get them done), there are only a few loose ends that need to be tied up (especially in comparison to where I've been in past weeks). There are other things, looming, behind all the teaching stress, things like missing my friends and family and boyfriend, things like feeling uncomfortable in this region, like I'm out of place among the people around me. There's the fact that I have to worry about money and bills, that I don't understand my health insurance, that I need new tires on my car and I have no one to help me. Stupid things, on the spectrum of things that one should worry about.
But then, looking at them all together, I see them form one big, dark cloud of real life, hovering over everything I do. And that's the same for everyone, I think, regardless of what they choose to do after college. We all move away from our friends and family, we all struggle adjusting to new things and new places and new people.
I guess that's what it comes down to. Change will inevitably be stressful, and difficult. You have to redefine what being happy means and sometimes the things that used to make you happy can't make you happy anymore, at least not in the same way, because the context of the new situation doesn't translate. I'm finding that I'm not making the adjustments necessary to keep myself happy the way I used to because I'm expecting the same things to work. That's the reason for the quarter life crisis- whether it's mine or my roommate's or some recent college grad I don't even know- that the final shift into "real life" has occurred and that's scary as hell.
That's depressing.
I'm looking at the things stressing me out tonight, and of course teaching this week is occupying one of the top places on the list. But I'm actually in a good place to start this week. I'm planned, I know the things I need to get done and when they need to get done by (and I have time to get them done), there are only a few loose ends that need to be tied up (especially in comparison to where I've been in past weeks). There are other things, looming, behind all the teaching stress, things like missing my friends and family and boyfriend, things like feeling uncomfortable in this region, like I'm out of place among the people around me. There's the fact that I have to worry about money and bills, that I don't understand my health insurance, that I need new tires on my car and I have no one to help me. Stupid things, on the spectrum of things that one should worry about.
But then, looking at them all together, I see them form one big, dark cloud of real life, hovering over everything I do. And that's the same for everyone, I think, regardless of what they choose to do after college. We all move away from our friends and family, we all struggle adjusting to new things and new places and new people.
I guess that's what it comes down to. Change will inevitably be stressful, and difficult. You have to redefine what being happy means and sometimes the things that used to make you happy can't make you happy anymore, at least not in the same way, because the context of the new situation doesn't translate. I'm finding that I'm not making the adjustments necessary to keep myself happy the way I used to because I'm expecting the same things to work. That's the reason for the quarter life crisis- whether it's mine or my roommate's or some recent college grad I don't even know- that the final shift into "real life" has occurred and that's scary as hell.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Communication
When I was in college, one of my creative essays was about how things has changed with the advent of instant electronic communication. I'm thinking about it again now, especially because my communication skills with others has been lacking so much, and why? What is my excuse when I can shoot someone a text, an email, a phone call, a web-call, all with the click of a button (or a few buttons)?
I'm relying heavily on conversations I've had with older people about what it was like before all this fancy-shmancy technology, back when people used things like the US Postal Service and landlines. My parents wrote each other letters when my dad was working down the Cape and my mom was stuck in Buffalo. That's right- LETTERS. When's the last time anyone has written a letter? And I mean a real letter, sent in the mail with a stamp. People still write letters today, but most of the time it's because they're just too chicken to say what they need to say out loud. Example: people who are trying to win back an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend (usually at night, when it's raining) and don't want to be rejected right to their face, or people who are lazy and would rather tell their coach in the written form that they deserve more playing time (that ones for my sister, a college volleyball coach). It seems that today, letters are reserved for the cowardly, the people who consciously choose not to say things out loud. The more I think about it, the more I've come to the conclusion that ALL textual communication can be used by those who are scared- scared of rejection, or of having to respond without proofreading their thoughts, or simply having to interact face-to-face, voice-to-voice. People use emails to complain to a boss, text messages to break off a relationship (talk about COWARDLY... and lame), webchats to search for new crushes. But given the platform for true expression- just using your voice- we tend to freeze up.
Just now, a cashier flirted with my roommate (I'm blogging in Breugger's Bagels) by taking $7 off her total rather than just telling her he wanted a date with her. Granted, he was about 40 and a creepshow, but still, he went far out of his way to avoid just talking to her.
We don't write letters anymore, but we've become reliant on these new forms of text to fuel our relationships. We've grown into a generation of subtlety, a generation that obsesses over whether to use one period or three, whether using the word "fine" instead of "okay" is the right decision. Our friends proofread our love lives and our parents do the same for our professional lives.
Back in the olden times (15 years ago), letters were a necessity, not a cop-out. They were something that had to be done because long distance calls cost more than just minutes out of a monthly allowance.
I'm all about bringing letters back, the real kind of letters that are romantic and sentimental and worth keeping around in a special letter box along with an engraved sterling silver letter opener. I can't tell you how many times I've had to put back letter stationary kits with wax, a monogrammed stamper, and paper made from the bark of 100 year old trees. Usually, what makes me put those things back on the clearance rack (always on clearance because, again, who sends letter, especially ones sealed with wax?) is the fact that I don't really know how to write letters. What happens when you send a letter to someone and they call you before it arrives? ("I'm sorry, please call me back after you've read the funny anecdotes and related questions I've sent via snail mail") What do you even talk about? Half the things I usually talk about look so uninteresting when put on paper. I've only gotten as far as greeting cards, which are allowed to be silly and pointless (ask my friends who have received a card from me).
I'm wondering if it's because vocal communication is so much easier now. I could write a letter about it, but why? Why do that when I can call up that person and give them the benefit of voice inflections, of pauses, of that indescribable tone added when a person talking is smiling? I think I'll stick to that, rather than writing it all done, stuffing it in an envelope, and sealing it with an S-imprinted wax circle.
I'm relying heavily on conversations I've had with older people about what it was like before all this fancy-shmancy technology, back when people used things like the US Postal Service and landlines. My parents wrote each other letters when my dad was working down the Cape and my mom was stuck in Buffalo. That's right- LETTERS. When's the last time anyone has written a letter? And I mean a real letter, sent in the mail with a stamp. People still write letters today, but most of the time it's because they're just too chicken to say what they need to say out loud. Example: people who are trying to win back an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend (usually at night, when it's raining) and don't want to be rejected right to their face, or people who are lazy and would rather tell their coach in the written form that they deserve more playing time (that ones for my sister, a college volleyball coach). It seems that today, letters are reserved for the cowardly, the people who consciously choose not to say things out loud. The more I think about it, the more I've come to the conclusion that ALL textual communication can be used by those who are scared- scared of rejection, or of having to respond without proofreading their thoughts, or simply having to interact face-to-face, voice-to-voice. People use emails to complain to a boss, text messages to break off a relationship (talk about COWARDLY... and lame), webchats to search for new crushes. But given the platform for true expression- just using your voice- we tend to freeze up.
Just now, a cashier flirted with my roommate (I'm blogging in Breugger's Bagels) by taking $7 off her total rather than just telling her he wanted a date with her. Granted, he was about 40 and a creepshow, but still, he went far out of his way to avoid just talking to her.
We don't write letters anymore, but we've become reliant on these new forms of text to fuel our relationships. We've grown into a generation of subtlety, a generation that obsesses over whether to use one period or three, whether using the word "fine" instead of "okay" is the right decision. Our friends proofread our love lives and our parents do the same for our professional lives.
Back in the olden times (15 years ago), letters were a necessity, not a cop-out. They were something that had to be done because long distance calls cost more than just minutes out of a monthly allowance.
I'm all about bringing letters back, the real kind of letters that are romantic and sentimental and worth keeping around in a special letter box along with an engraved sterling silver letter opener. I can't tell you how many times I've had to put back letter stationary kits with wax, a monogrammed stamper, and paper made from the bark of 100 year old trees. Usually, what makes me put those things back on the clearance rack (always on clearance because, again, who sends letter, especially ones sealed with wax?) is the fact that I don't really know how to write letters. What happens when you send a letter to someone and they call you before it arrives? ("I'm sorry, please call me back after you've read the funny anecdotes and related questions I've sent via snail mail") What do you even talk about? Half the things I usually talk about look so uninteresting when put on paper. I've only gotten as far as greeting cards, which are allowed to be silly and pointless (ask my friends who have received a card from me).
I'm wondering if it's because vocal communication is so much easier now. I could write a letter about it, but why? Why do that when I can call up that person and give them the benefit of voice inflections, of pauses, of that indescribable tone added when a person talking is smiling? I think I'll stick to that, rather than writing it all done, stuffing it in an envelope, and sealing it with an S-imprinted wax circle.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
When It's Right
I was thinking today, on my miserable 5 am drive to work, how people know when things are right. A lot of people have been asking me if I will stay in teaching after my two years with Teach for America, and I answer them every time with "I have no idea." Anyway, part of it is that right now, I don't look past 2:15 pm until I get there.
In my zombie state this morning (one made much worse than usual because of a pretty sucky day yesterday) I wondered if I would ever feel "right" in teaching, wondered if that "this is for me" moment happens right at the beginning, in those first few minutes or hours of the first day of school.
If that's true, then I made a very poor decision.
But then I got to thinking about other things, other places where people always claim to feel "rightness" and I think that those kind of realizations don't happen because your pre-conceived expectations have been met. I think it's more than you are exposed to all these new things, things you don't have expectations for because you've never even considered them before. I thought about all my friends, the ones that have been there for me through everything, and how I came to know it was right. It wasn't because they ranked well on some generic checklist accepted by the general population. It's because some part of them came completely out of the blue and surprised me, whether it was some incredibly strange personality trait, an ability to make fun of me in a way that was absolutely hilarious, or simply the fact that they owned a red cape and liked vampires (oh, how we make friends in elementary school...).
I guess it comes down to that in any part of life. In jobs, in friends, in relationships-- we find that "right" person or place or thing (whatever it may be) when we find something intangible, something that blows our expectations out of the water, something we could have never counted on until we have it, and then suddenly we don't know where we would be without it.
In my zombie state this morning (one made much worse than usual because of a pretty sucky day yesterday) I wondered if I would ever feel "right" in teaching, wondered if that "this is for me" moment happens right at the beginning, in those first few minutes or hours of the first day of school.
If that's true, then I made a very poor decision.
But then I got to thinking about other things, other places where people always claim to feel "rightness" and I think that those kind of realizations don't happen because your pre-conceived expectations have been met. I think it's more than you are exposed to all these new things, things you don't have expectations for because you've never even considered them before. I thought about all my friends, the ones that have been there for me through everything, and how I came to know it was right. It wasn't because they ranked well on some generic checklist accepted by the general population. It's because some part of them came completely out of the blue and surprised me, whether it was some incredibly strange personality trait, an ability to make fun of me in a way that was absolutely hilarious, or simply the fact that they owned a red cape and liked vampires (oh, how we make friends in elementary school...).
I guess it comes down to that in any part of life. In jobs, in friends, in relationships-- we find that "right" person or place or thing (whatever it may be) when we find something intangible, something that blows our expectations out of the water, something we could have never counted on until we have it, and then suddenly we don't know where we would be without it.
Monday, October 5, 2009
I Eat My Feelings
Something about eating my body weight in cinnamon rolls makes my general failure at life seem not so bad.
Good thing the teaching diet has shed off my excess weight. That and the fact that I got lost for an hour and a half on my run yesterday. I did manage to find my dreeeeeam home, in one of those neighborhoods where you get intoxicated off of the smell of expensive landscaping. How is it possible for mulch to smell that wonderful?
Anyway, tomorrow's another day, and so is the next day, and the next...
Good thing the teaching diet has shed off my excess weight. That and the fact that I got lost for an hour and a half on my run yesterday. I did manage to find my dreeeeeam home, in one of those neighborhoods where you get intoxicated off of the smell of expensive landscaping. How is it possible for mulch to smell that wonderful?
Anyway, tomorrow's another day, and so is the next day, and the next...
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Lack of Blogging
Am I really running out of new things to talk about, only in October? I guess it's the same stuff that's hard every single day, and I don't want to bore anyone with all those mundane details.
An interesting moment- one of my kids calling me Mrs. Bologna... not even close to Fiorillo. Not even a little bit. Aside from being a long shot from my real last name, they've had me as a teacher for over a month. Also, apparently I'm the type that looks like I would actually marry into that last name, that my husband is made of all the leftover processed meat and could be slapped on an elementary lunchbox sandwich at any second.
I'll have to re-blog when I get something fun to talk about...
An interesting moment- one of my kids calling me Mrs. Bologna... not even close to Fiorillo. Not even a little bit. Aside from being a long shot from my real last name, they've had me as a teacher for over a month. Also, apparently I'm the type that looks like I would actually marry into that last name, that my husband is made of all the leftover processed meat and could be slapped on an elementary lunchbox sandwich at any second.
I'll have to re-blog when I get something fun to talk about...
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