“No, you’re awesome, it’s just… I don’t know what it is, but I’m not happy.”
I’m not even mad – you either feel it or you don’t. It’s just… this keeps happening and I truly don’t understand it. How do I go from being “awesome” to “meh” without having done anything wrong? And when she can’t articulate any reason WHY she’s not happy, I can’t even look at the relationship as a growing/learning experience.
So, sitting in a workshop about scaffolding lessons today, a little ways into the program I was relating an instance where I tried a scaffold that flopped.
The facilitator asked me to “think back to when you were a first year teacher.”
I had to interject with “well, I AM a first year teacher.”
“Wait, what? You certainly don’t sound like it.”
I have gotten that reaction from no fewer than half a dozen other professionals… apparently I don’t talk or act like a first year. I’ve been called a “natural” by my AP, my principal, my mentor and my professor.
I wish I knew how to turn off the CONSTANT noise in my head.
I feel too much and I think too much and I just can’t turn it off. I wake in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep because my brain starts churning.
I feel like River Tam sometimes, without the super intelligence or grace. Just the overwhelming feeling of everything and the inability to process it.
I overthink every single situation, over-analyze every decision. Agonize over things I cannot control.
One of these days I will remember to let the good stuff come back to me.
I put a lot of time, energy and (when I have it) money into taking care of the people close to me. And yet, I have such a hard time accepting help in return. Like I am somehow insufficient if I ever accept help, especially in monetary form. I had to admit to K today that while I would still be coming out to visit, I would need to keep it very low budget while we were out there. Her response was exactly what I needed to hear: my own words repeated back to me.
Be kind to yourself.
About a month ago I modeled for a photo project she is doing. As part of said project she asked each of her models to pose with a sign displaying a short message to the other women who see these photos. I deliberated for a few days, wanting to be profound yet succinct, without plagiarizing anyone. In the end I settled on “Be kind to yourself.” This isn’t the first time she’s lovingly tossed that back at me either.
I tend to be very hard on myself when I don’t feel like I’m measuring up. Whether it’s at work, or school, or… anything really. I never got mad if I lost at something if I felt I did my best, but the competition was just better or luckier. I only ever really kicked myself if I thought I didn’t work hard enough, or if I didn’t take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves.
But I need to take my own advice and just relax sometimes. There will always be setbacks and rough patches. I need to get over my pride and be gracious when people who love me want to help out.
When they hear my workload between teaching and grad school, a lot of people’s reaction is something like “wow, I don’t know how you do it.” My response is usually either “neither do I” or “I have to.”
And that’s not me downplaying myself. Those statements are both true. I really don’t know how I pull it off sometimes. The rest of my life is slipping away though. I don’t spend near enough time with family, friends or my girlfriend. My house is usually messy. I haven’t been at least sort-of tired since August.
I remember asking some coworkers in the same program who also have small children how they’re doing this and they give the same answer. “I guess when you have to, you figure out a way.”
“When you have more to lose, making decisions gets harder.”
It may sound elementary now, but I have to thank the lovely K for finally making me feel like less of an idiot for being as indecisive as I am. When you have little to nothing to lose by making a somewhat risky decision, well… why not? But when a wrong move can have much more dire consequences, it’s really hard to make that leap.
And I’ve had enough times in my life where the risks usually lose and “slow and steady wins the race” proves out more often than not. The teaching job has been the biggest leap of faith I’ve made in a very long time. Not because I didn’t think I’d be good at it, but because I had to give up a decent paying job for the CHANCE of being hired as a teacher. But I was so miserable in the other job that taking the leap became worth it. Yes, I had a salary to lose, but I had my sanity to gain.
So far, it’s paid off well for me. Maybe not financially (at least, not yet), but in the long run this will be best for me. Yes, it’s hard work, but anything worth doing usually is. It’s a lot of work away from work, but I had that with the last job and didn’t get anything for it. And I was on call for all kinds of stupidity. Now I can manage my own workload… which I hope and pray will become easier to do as the years go on and I get better at this and have a bigger array of tools and tricks at my disposal.
Oh, and vacations. Lord, I needed those… 😉
But there are other areas of life where I’m a little more inclined to take a leap.
I’m just feeling really drained this week. I put a LOT of work into my formal observation with my AP and yet I still don’t feel like it was good enough. I’m redoing one failed project for grad school, AND I have my grad school advisor observing me on Friday. Plus we know the superintendent is coming soon (this has been coming literally for months). And I haven’t even started my big data project for school yet. Ugh.
I’m probably overreacting, and probably being too hard on myself, but damn, I don’t just want to survive, I want to do well. Everyone expects me to be a rock star, and so far I’ve delivered, but it’s like being on an undefeated sports team. It’s a huge pressure to maintain. When you’ve got nowhere to go but down, it can be just as scary as the opposite.
Add to all this the fact that I’m not sure how I’m going to make it to my next paycheck, and my stress level is absurdly high right now.
I really need to go back to recounting what I’m grateful for, because right now it all hurts.
Last night I had the baton passed to me in grad school. The award device itself is a play on the school’s name (Relay) but the award is interesting.
The first one was given by the staff to one of us, but since then it gets passed each session from one grad student to the next, for exhibiting a number of desirable traits. Among those traits are things like grit, dedication, and so on. Recipients get their picture on our little wall of fame.
Last night I received it for “social intelligence.” I had helped the person who passed it to me revise her teaching demo for an interview. Something others had helped me with in the past, and certainly something I’d helped others with too. What I hadn’t realized at the time was that after going on many (read: 12+) interviews, she had decided that this one was do-or-die: if she didn’t get it, she was leaving the program. Wow, no pressure.
I could have gone the traditional route and gone back to school on my own and hoped to find a job. I went through the Fellows because I wanted… no… I knew I needed the support of a like-minded community. So I do what I can to foster that. And it all comes back in wonderful ways.
Now I need to decide who to pass it to when we reconvene in February. So many wonderful colleagues and friends…
It’s hard for me to admit I need help. It’s even harder to ask for it. But I’ve had my hand forced.
I’m always the one helping others. Always the rock. Always the reliable one. I’ve literally had people tell me they wish they could be more like me. It’s a lovely compliment, but it just adds to the constant pressure of being me.
That sounds insanely vain and self-centered, I realize that. But I feel like I have this image of me that I’ve built up, and admitting any weakness would shatter that.
But here it is: I’m broke. I have the complete and utter inability to say no to people, and as such I spend money when I know I shouldn’t, at the expense of the inability to pay my bills. I haven’t really adjusted to my new (lower) pay, and I never really recovered from August when I wasn’t working and consequently wasn’t getting paid.
Mom cornered me with it last night, and then finally at T and Boo’s I lost it when I realized I was once again having to choose between groceries and bills this month.
I now have a freezer full of food, a check in my pocket and money on the way from mom. It’s belayed the stress for now and hopefully I can at least get current with everything. *deep breath*
I’m a single, fully employed adult but I can’t keep my head above water? But there’s gotta be a better way…
I’m discovering the education world can be weird. When I was an apprentice I knew I wasn’t allowed to be in a room alone with the kids. Despite having taught informally for years, supervising teens and all my previous experience, I didn’t have a license yet. That meant that when my cooperating teacher was out, the sub still had to come in. Granted, they let me run the show, but a licensed teacher had to be in the room.
Today I had the first experience of the shoe being on the other foot – I was in the Dean’s office while about half a dozen kids were serving detention – one of whom has a paraprofessional with him. The dean had to run out and take care of something, so he asked me to stay for a few minutes. I didn’t mind but wasn’t sure why he needed me to. It wasn’t until the para pointed out that I had to – because she’s not allowed to be alone with the kids. It was kind of surreal to have this flipped on me. Like I suddenly matter.
I find it odd that a para can be held singly responsible for a special needs student, but can’t babysit a room full of kids in detention. The people who run these after school programs don’t have teaching licenses either, yet they’re in charge of a whole room full of kids. Maybe it’s because it’s no longer officially school at that point? *shrug*
Silver Tides 