Tired
I must be losing it, somewhere, somehow. I used to teach from 7am to 3pm. Everyday. Sometimes without a lunch break or a plan period. And even when I had one, my kids were there, or my colleges, or there was a meeting, or something. I was around people all the time, on my feet, talking, teaching, doing, going, going, going. That’s hardly the case now.
Yes, I teach more classes on average professor on campus - outside of the Ed Dept, where we believe in never saying “no”, all being former workers in public education - and I travel around the region from school to school doing observations, but still, this all feels like far less teaching than I used to do. Yes, I have classes that stretch from 1 hour and 10 minutes, to 8 hours straight, including Saturday s, but on a weekly ave, I teach considerably less than I once did.
I teach less, grade less, and spend less time in front of people, but have never been this tired as often at the end of a day.
Maybe therein lies the harsh reality. I’m an introverted succubus: I feed of the interactions I once had. I was energized by standing, running, hoping, jumping in front of a class of 30 high school students unlocking the mystery of some novel, short story or poem, arguing over the best of all possible worlds theory or virtue ethics, but now, I spend way too much time sitting down, at a desk, in a car, in front of grad students.
Maybe this is why I have a hard time saying no. Why I add classes outside of my current content area, adding to my stress: it allows me more time to interact with students. More time to make connections, getting to know people. Why I keep saying yes to leading groups, judging contests, speaking for groups and to individuals when asked. Maybe I miss the daily in-your-faceness of my previous job, when I saw my kids every single day, not once or twice a week. When following up with someone was easily accomplished in a hallway or at the door, instead of through email or running into them on campus. When my office was my classroom, not a space separate from all other normal, daily interactions: somewhere not officially labeled. Maybe this tiredness is from feeling sedentary. Possibly stagnant.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
On Keys And Conscious
“First, do no harm.” – Hippocratic Oath
It’s so hard sometimes to gently destroys someone’s illusion, even for their own good. Sometimes you just want to let someone remain in ignorance about something because it will be easier than addressing the problem. You can rationalize it away as not being the same as not taking the keys from a drunk. What is the harm in him thinking he’s correct, and what’s the problem allowing her to continue saying the same things, even when you know that they are both wrong? Other than having to live with the occasional discomfort.
“Never open a wound you can’t close.” – medical proverb.
But while people might have a right to think what they want, they are entitled to their own opinion, are we not also bound to correct them, deontologically bound, when we see that their error leads them to a place of pain, a place of discomfort, a place of intellectual or physical dissonance time and time again?I have a duty to tell you to give me your keys, even metaphorically.
But this means I must stick around long enough to make sure you get home.
What I Won’t Be Saying In Chapel
I’m speaking in chapel on Wednesday. Here is what I won’t be saying, though it was on my heart to say it, and would fit in with the message:
Everyone is NOT here because God wants them to be here.
Some of these people are outside of God’s will and that is why they are here.
Yes, God may want you to be here, it may be in His plans for you to do, learn and share great things, but you have free will. You chose to send in an application. You chose to accept and send in a deposit. You chose to enroll. You have free will. Others are running from what God has for you and that is why you are here.
Do you really believe that God forced you to come here? Is all of your life happenings completely by divine fiat? Does that include your sin? Are you where you aren’t supposed to be because God made you go there as well? Or is it only the good places wherein God supersedes your freedom of choice?
You can be on the wrong path and be in a “good” place. Churches are filled with people who are in the wrong seats: maybe that’s why “you’re not being fed.” So are some marriages: who said that God brought you together in the first place?
So take stock of your location as it stands before God. Don’t assume that being surrounded by Christians in a godly place means that you’re in the center of God’s will for your life.
I went to ENC years ago, and was in Gospel Choir, with a girl who stated that she knew she wasn’t supposed to be at ENC; this was her third school, and nothing was going right, because she was avoiding what it was that God wanted from her. Three schools, a lot of time, money and wasted energy avoiding what God wanted, but if she kept going to Christian schools in the area He might change His mind in regards to her life.
I call that stupid. Don’t be stupid.
That’s the end of my rant about that.
You can only imagine why I’m not going to go down this road in the middle of chapel.
For Really Real
OPHELIA
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
LORD POLONIUS
Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
OPHELIA
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
LORD POLONIUS
Marry, I’ll teach you: think yourself a baby;
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or–not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus–you’ll tender me a fool.(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3)
Perk Of The Job
I get to sit quietly in the back of a kindergarten classroom observing a teacher, and suddenly hear a little white girl start singing TI’s “Live Your Life” to herself quietly. No one else seems to notice before she stops. Made my day.