Eskimo

I'm writing this from our empty classroom, where I sit alone for the last time. It's my last day of student-teaching. With two class periods down, I've shocked some of the kids who have only just realized (even though I've told them for weeks) that I won't be back after today. And while some of them are probably not too sad to see me go (I've warned them that the work load I've given them won't stop when I leave - I wasn't the one telling me what to plan, you know), most of them have this look of "please don't leave us" on their young faces.

That look always makes it so hard to leave them.

I asked an education professor once if there was a way to separate our human emotions from our teacher emotions - the same way hospice nurses do. And she said that, unfortunately, it's impossible. After all, how will you ever be effective if you chose to remain detached, unfeeling, disconnected?  This is not the sort of job that you leave in a drawer when you go home at night. Your dealings are not with boxes and paperwork; you are placed in charge of that most delicate of products - human souls. Their young images flash across your mind as you think about something brilliant that they said, something funny that they did, some character trait that you wish you didn't see developing at their tender ages. You can't help but be "all-in" - totally invested, totally submerged. And when you leave, you can't help but leave a bit of your heart with those kids who have taken so much of your thought and energy.

I remember watching the kids on my last day at my last field experience, a seventh-grade class. I remember thinking as I watched them, bent over their work, "What will happen to them?" Where will these tender little souls end up? I don't see my juniors and seniors with the same innocence beaming from them - so many of them are so hard and cynical already. But I still can't help but wonder what will become of them. They're still so young, so early in their lives, and yet they already feel so beaten-down by their experience. Most of my students are seniors, which means they're heading off to...something, whether it's college or the army or the work force or their parents' basements. And I can't help but wonder about where they'll go, what they'll do, who they'll become after our lives part ways, them spiraling off to one uncertain future and me to another.

My next class is coming in, and I have to pass out the cookies that I baked for them. I will think of you at first, my kiddos - those thoughts will fade, but for now you will come to mind often as I think of you, pray for you, miss some of your cheerful spirits and the smiles that you gave to me in the most trying few months of my life. Thank you for being my first classes. Thank you for bearing with me as we learned together and stuck it out in a place where neither of us wanted to be.

Thank you for making my last semester of college one to remember.

Dodge

I have a question.

Actually I have a great many questions. Such as: when you put ketchup on something, is it because you like the taste of ketchup better than you like the taste of that food, or does the ketchup do something to the taste of the food itself? Or: how could you tell in the earliest versions of airplanes if you were low on gas without a computer-chip gas tank, did you keep it in the front seat with you? (The perks of dating a airplane mechanic so he can tell you these things.) But this one’s actually one that I’m interested in learning the answer to, not just something I ponder when I’m driving home alone in my car.

Incidentally I thought of a really cool idea for a character interaction. I imagined an older guy coming home from work every night and, without offering a “hello” or a “I’m home,” he asks some stupid question, taps his granddaughter on the temple, and says, “Now there’s something to ponder.” And she hates when he does that. Ponder what? How long is one expected to ponder something? Until an answer is discovered? Is he really even looking for an answer? Or is he just focused on the act of you pondering? But the big question is: why can’t he come in the house and say “Call me when dinner’s ready” like a normal person.

I digress.

Why is it such a big deal when someone “comes out?” Why do people record videos, make announcements, schedule press conferences, hire skywriters to declare to the universe “I AM A HOMOSEXUAL”? I’m not saying not to do it: however you deliver news is your business. I personally like to announce when we’re out of peanut butter in my house with much laying face-down in the floor and questioning the purpose of my existence in a peanut butter-less household. But what does that do? Literally, nothing. It doesn’t make a new Jif jar appear before me and lessen my burden. (First-world problems: “There’s no more peanut butter, I may as well just cease to be.”) So what does such an announcement do for the world when a homosexual declares something that he or she already acknowledges that they are?

I think the odd thing about being a homosexual (and this is all innocent speculation, I’ve never actually been one) is that it seems like you have to prove something. “I’m gay, now let me show you what I can do.” Is it a general assumption that, because you’re a homosexual, you move a few steps down on some ladder and you have to work extra-hard to make your way back up again? Or is it that it’s such a small (though ever-growing) community that you have to work to secure the status of “your group” (I don’t mean to marginalize, I pray you not to take it as such) within the larger circles of society? One of my former students chose to be “over the top” with the embodiment of his sexuality, even at the expense of his own safety, for the sake of the handful of other homosexuals within that school. And while I admire his courage at such a young age, I had to ask…what was the point?

This “pondering” has been sparked by a video of a country music singer coming out, and it just struck me as odd to announce something that you classify as your identity – part of who you are, a slice of your psychological and physical makeup. I wonder if I stood up and said, “Dear friends and family…I’m a woman,” even though that’s already part of my identity, if I would have shocked responses and people turning to me for support. “Don’t let anybody stifle that part of you, your courage is an inspiration to us all.” Somehow I don’t think it would have the same effect.

I’m not trying to start a fight, and I don’t want to be perceived as a homophobe or a bigot or anything even remotely related to that – you do what you do, I’ll do what I do, tom-ay-to to-mah-to, bada-bing-bada-bam. But I am genuinely interested in hearing an answer: if we’re supposed to be moving toward a society of equality and less of a dichotomy between the formerly-separated “us” and “them”…why must it still be addressed with fanfare and YouTube videos?

Back

My brain is so exhausted. In the past week I've gone from substitute teaching to going back to school to seriously looking at going back to school in the spring to sitting on the back of my truck talking to a very wise man about how my whole life has been a lie. But I've finally put into words what I'm going to do.

When I graduate I won't be going back to school. I thought about maybe going back and finishing my English degree - I would only need to take twelve credits and could knock it out in a semester. But when I emailed one of my profs about a class question and explained my game plan, he asked if we could talk it through a little bit. He explained that it would mean more money spent on getting a degree that, in the eyes of potential employers, I already have. He said it would be a better use of my time and money to go ahead and work - pick up another job, work my ass off (let it be known that I am not afraid of hard work and lots of it), live at home, and start to make myself more financially stable while figuring out what I really want to do.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that going back to school was a safe option. I've been a student for a long time. I'm used to it. But it's not moving me forward at all. In fact it would be putting me into even more debt for something that I basically already have. And in my panic over the impending end of the semester, I was desperate for some option. In the week since it was presented to me, I hadn't had a chance to sit in silence and think it through. I was flying around, frazzled and exhausted and panicked and scared, and I wasn't seeing clearly, let alone thinking clearly.

Which is never a good way to make decisions.

About an hour into our conversation, he said I need to figure that out first, because he hadn't heard it up to that point. I said, "I want to find a Muggle job (something that brings in cash even though it might have nothing to do with my actual degree) that I can leave at work so I can write on the side."

And he said, "That's it. That's what I should do."

And so that's what I'll do.

I have twenty-five days left of student teaching, and after that I'll certainly have my Kroger job to look forward to. I'm going to focus on looking at library jobs - I don't need my masters to just have a staff job, only if I were planning on being a full-out librarian. I picked up an application today and hopefully should know something in the next few weeks. I figured out that I really don't want to be a substitute teacher: I've been told that it's boring and not that great of pay, and it just really isn't something that I want to do.

So now we have a game plan. A real game plan. A more sure game plan. And, this time, the game plan that I want.

I'm scared. I'm unsure of what job I'll do or where I'll eventually go. But for right now, this is OK. My prof said that this point in my life - my early twenties - is not only allowed to be an experimental one, but it's expected. And the only thing I'll be held accountable on at this point is my effort in finding another job. And that is so much more comforting.

And it's OK to be scared. Because this time is very scary. And there's no need to minimize that.

For the first time in months, I feel like I'll be OK. And that is such an amazing sense of relief.

Rise

Today was the first day that I seriously thought about quitting. I was so close to walking out the front door of that school and saying, "No thank you, I'm done," to ending this charade and going out to find what I really want to do. I was looking at jobs online yesterday and getting so discouraged when I didn't find anything where I might fit. (Ma squashed my interest in the high-speed career of urn salesman, she said I wouldn't be very good at sales.) And at this point - as I told the guy who called from Concordia University to talk about a masters in education - I'm not interested in continuing with this venture after graduation - the next 43 days are merely a formality, a hoop to jump through, a means to an end that is unnecessarily overwhelming and confusing and not rewarding on most days. Most of the time I fly around trying to remember everything that I need to do while also trying not to stress out and to remember that this is just a thing, this is not a life. In 43 days this will be over, and I'll be moving on. To what, I have not the slightest clue. But to something other than teaching.

I took a  minute to look over the notes my 7th grades from my last school wrote to me on the last day I was there last year. And it almost made me cry to see those little smiley faces and heart doodles around the encouragement to "Mrs. Howls" to "keep the faith," "don't give up."

"We'll miss you."

"We loved having you."

"You'll be a great teacher."

These little people who had faith in me when now my faith in myself is dwindling.

I'm so overwhelmed, my heart is so full. My brain never shuts off and I don't see any break from it.

O God, my God, calm my writhing spirit. O God, my God, help me to lift my eyes to Your precious peace, Your ever-steady calm.

Decoder

I was legitimately offended last night when the punk at Wendy's asked if I wanted my Frosty to be chocolate or vanilla. I was born in an era in which all Frostys with chocolate. Vanilla Frostys are almost as white Oreos. If you want vanilla ice cream, go to Dairy Queen.

Anyway.

I am sincerely terrible at fiction.

My first story was about a little mushroom who got kidnapped by...some other evil food - they may have been eggs. We were going through our third grade reading books and I saw the title "Mort and the Sour Scheme," and I used it as a prompt to start my own story. One long paragraph typed in WordPad. In italicized cyan ink. 10-font.

I got close to a decent plot (if not the decent writing of a plot) in high school, inspired by "Beauty and the Beast" to take down the tale of an orphan boy whisked away to England to be a servant to an eccentric old man. Very Downton Abbey "focus on the servants" feel. I even had characters drawn out - one of them looked like Ratcliffe from "Pocahontas." But a friend lost my only printed manuscript and all of my typed work was lost in a computer crash. All I had left was about a third that I had handwritten - not to mention a very Jo March, my-whole-life's-work-and-purpose-down-the-drain feeling. And while I tried to get it back and have even thought about picking it up again with my now-more-mature writing style, the magic of the original is gone.

My later attempts have been depressing little scenes about rebellion, death, heartache, fear, isolation by and from others. I've started several times to pen the idea in my head of a rehab house where the inhabitants/patients/inmates/what-have-you are trapped there by a greedy counselor who uses his state funds to fuel his drinking habits. But my problem is, I can't write it down in a story.

I hear the dialogue, I see the details, I have the movements all planned out. But to write them down in a "John paused in his journey across the green linoleum" format is appalling. The lines become cheesy, the details unnecessary; and the whole thing takes on the feel of a Nicholas Sparks book that says "pick me up in your beach hotel gift shop when you finish everything else you brought to read."

I.e. "shiterature."

Hold on tight, we're shifting now.

I think I've narrowed down my near-but-not-total-future choice to two options: find a totally-unrelated-to-writing job (a "Muggle job," if you will), or proofreading. I really enjoy editing for some reason. Which is awesome, considering I have about two inches of essays to grade this weekend. If I could find a job where I can read, maybe stay at home for a lot of it, and get ideas for my own writing - that would seriously be awesome.

Unrealistic? Maybe. But I'm a dreamer, don't you know.

So I have some avenues. I can always look at Career Services at the 'Ville for options. My cooperating teacher said she has a contact who quit teaching to work in editing, maybe she could hook me up. And there's always freelance - certainly not as a full-time job but definitely as a means of some work if I were to just stick with a Muggle job. Which I'd be cool with.

Gah. I can't even decide what I want for lunch, how am I supposed to make these grownup decisions about my life?

Leaf

It's been about a week since I finally put into words that the path I've chosen isn't what I want to do. Since my meltdown on my couch last Saturday I've conferenced with my ma, talked to my cooperating teacher and supervisor, messaged two of the wisest men I know, vented to Joey, and emailed my English profs at school for help. And this is basically what I've learned:

• Most importantly, I don't have to feel like I have everything figured out. I am, in fact, only 22 years old - maybe about 1/4 of the way through my life. The fact that I'm not sure is OK.
• This isn't a decision that I have to make tomorrow. There is ZERO reason to freak out about it now.
• I can basically do anything (except nursing and engineering) with an English education degree. I've learned how to be a good writer, the ins and outs of grammar (a.k.a. editing skills, a.k.a knowing that "editing" has one T and not two), above-average communication skills, and how to instruct other people in those areas. This is why businesses like to hire English (even education) majors.
• No amount of education can be called a waste. Even if I don't go into the field of my degree I've learned many more valuable things.
• If I go to grad school and live at home, my parents will help to pay for it. Ma mentioned looking into something to do with libraries.
• Editing and publishing are good places to start, as well as some (but not exclusively) freelance writing.
• "Writing on the side" is all well and good, but that can be hard if I get a job writing during the day - when it's time to write for yourself, you're tired of words. Unrelated jobs give you ammo to write about at night anyway.

It's a start. At least it's more than I had to go on than last weekend.

So let's list the options. I could go to grad school online and work (maybe two jobs) while I live at home, have my parents help me pay for it, and stash away the money that I'm earning. I just need to figure out what to go for, and it needs to be something I'm really interested in. I could keep working at Kroger and pick up another job in January (where, though?). I could always sub (which would make it tough to get another job since the days are so erratic), but that would be putting my degree to at least some use. One of those wise men encouraged me to try teaching for a year or two, but that doesn't sound like a great choice when I have one of the teachers from my student teaching school saying if I'm not 150% passionate about it to get out now. (I've spent the last four years working at a job I'm not passionate about, I don't want teaching to become "just a job" and lose that enthusiasm that will make me effective). I could pick up and move to Pennsylvania or North Carolina or Ireland (just me and my debt) and say, "Screw this, I'm starting over."

My parents rest easy at night knowing I'm too fat and uncoordinated to be a stripper.

One of the options has never been just dropping out: I have one last hoop to jump through - just eleven or twelve weeks (and some of those are only half-weeks, at that) and I'll have my diploma. And you have a better chance of getting a better job with better pay if you have a degree - regardless of what it's in - than if you walk in with a half-baked degree. And like Joey said, I don't have to worry about this tomorrow...why panic about it today?

The one thing I forget most of the time is to rely on God's timing. He has a game plan, He sees what's coming down the road and through the fog that I can't even imagine yet. And while I'm running around in a panic, He has all of this figured out. The only thing I have to focus on now is jumping through this last hoop and letting Him show me the next step.

~

Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4.6-7)

That Moment

There comes a moment when you have look at your life and say, "Am I doing what I really want to do?"

Not what someone says is a good choice, not what sounds logical on paper, not what looks like the best option.

Am I doing what I really want to do?

And if the answer is no, you have to figure it out what it is instead.

~

I think the whole idea of college is confusing to a lot of us. Before you even move in, you have to pick a degree, which will be the basis for the rest of your educational career. You get into your classes, and some of us realize that we hate those classes. And so you change your major to something you're pretty sure you'll like better. And the training you get is what prepares you for what you'll supposedly do for the rest of your life.

And suddenly you find yourself sitting on your couch, eating pizza and bawling as you finally put into words the thought that has crept up on you when you're lying in the dark and finally able to drop the front: 

"I don't want to be a teacher." 

The job you've imagined, trained for, dreamed about really isn't what you thought it was.

You start to panic a little. This was the plan! This was my future! This was what I was banking on! I want so much to love this! Guys, I am good at teaching! Kids learn from me! I'm planning and doing and teaching and organizing and gathering resources so I can do this on my own!

And I don't want to do it.

I'm about a month into student teaching, and it's going really well. And I've been warned, "Don't write this off already, you've only just started." But you know how you just know about some things? This is one of those things.

The problem is, I don't know what else to do. I've talked over so many options with my ma in the past two days, I"m just getting more and more confused. It doesn't help that I have this perspective in my head (wrong though it may be) that I have to find a job "worthy of my degree." Something in my head tells me it has to be something that will send me upward, something that will challenge me and so many others, something that will influence the world.

Is it bad that all I want is a 9-5 job that I can leave at work?

Is it bad that I've cost my family thousands of dollars - earned myself thousands of dollars' worth of debt - worked for four-and-a-half years on a degree and all I want to do is be a writer?

It is bad that I'm coming to the end of a very long and hard journey and want to ditch the path I thought was mine, running back to the love I developed in third grade but didn't see as a viable option?

I haven't had a day off since Labor Day, working sixteen-hour days during the week and eight-hour shifts on the weekends. I am exhausted, physically and emotionally. And at first I wondered if all of this meltdown might just be a side effect of this. But I don't think this is just me being tired. I believe that when you get to the point where you're too exhausted to put up your defenses, the truth comes out.

I don't want to teach.

I'm going to finish student-teaching - stopping that has never been an option. But when I graduate, I don't think I'll be found in a classroom.

Prayers as I question what I'm supposed to do - get a job, move out, go for my masters - would be appreciated.