Tore UP!
Those mornings when you wake up and everything is suddenly clear, or a connection suddenly pops out...(this post from last Friday)
I woke before my alarm this morning (wait, when don't I these days?) and headed downstairs to the basement to make coffee. Noticed the sunrise coming through those glorious, tall windows. Lucky me. Padded through the bathroom for my robe on my way, remembering the "fairy dust" of change all over the floors. But it's not just the fairy dust, this is Full On Change.
This is AFGO territory, Another Freaking Growth Opportunity.
My house is, as we'd say in Southern vernacular, "Tore UP!" To the point where I wonder when it will be normal again. If, when the big plastic curtain is gone, I'll still go around the left of the staircase to head to the kitchen or to the back door to let the dogs out.
These last couple of weeks have been really trying, personally and professionally, and each side feeds off the other side's mania and stress. At home things are upside down, and things have felt really sideways in my teaching. I felt woefully underprepared for this crop of Middle College students and I am not sure I have helped them in any way. Is it because I'm a hot mess as a result of my house being a hot mess? I know the material cold. They definitely don't, and in that regard, I failed them some. They also failed to meet me even 25% of the way, so it's not all a "Me" problem. I feel awful for them, that there was an opportunity and a challenge set before them, and they couldn't get out of their own way to meet it and do the work. To feel what it is to Do. Work. I try hard not to extrapolate and generalize what I just saw towards all young people of this generation. I know at least one niefling who is decidedly NOT like these others, God be praised. It is difficult to come to terms with what I did and what I could have done, should have done, better, sooner, more often, all of that.
My house is a disaster, but it's becoming better. It's looking stronger and more modern. Someday it will be clean and neat and tidy, for all of five minutes. It will have a kitchen that will make us really happy for these upcoming holidays and for many years to come (if the next rains don't make us all sink into the swamp, bless you, Sump Pump).
I hope I can also say that while my life feels in disaster now, it is also becoming better. What hasn't killed me will make me stronger, with some time and thought and looootts of distance. I would very much like to sharpen this edge to make sure I'm ready for the next crop of troublemakers, wherever I find them. I hope my actual college students, whom I'll meet next week, are truly ready to act like and become college students.
I hope I can match the growth I'm seeing in these walls with my own progress toward being a better human being, a better teacher, a better friend. Jim might say a better wife, but he knows better. ;) And if there's a better way to reach these kids and the generations that come, I hope the universe will show me or let me find it.
I woke before my alarm this morning (wait, when don't I these days?) and headed downstairs to the basement to make coffee. Noticed the sunrise coming through those glorious, tall windows. Lucky me. Padded through the bathroom for my robe on my way, remembering the "fairy dust" of change all over the floors. But it's not just the fairy dust, this is Full On Change.
This is AFGO territory, Another Freaking Growth Opportunity.
My house is, as we'd say in Southern vernacular, "Tore UP!" To the point where I wonder when it will be normal again. If, when the big plastic curtain is gone, I'll still go around the left of the staircase to head to the kitchen or to the back door to let the dogs out.
These last couple of weeks have been really trying, personally and professionally, and each side feeds off the other side's mania and stress. At home things are upside down, and things have felt really sideways in my teaching. I felt woefully underprepared for this crop of Middle College students and I am not sure I have helped them in any way. Is it because I'm a hot mess as a result of my house being a hot mess? I know the material cold. They definitely don't, and in that regard, I failed them some. They also failed to meet me even 25% of the way, so it's not all a "Me" problem. I feel awful for them, that there was an opportunity and a challenge set before them, and they couldn't get out of their own way to meet it and do the work. To feel what it is to Do. Work. I try hard not to extrapolate and generalize what I just saw towards all young people of this generation. I know at least one niefling who is decidedly NOT like these others, God be praised. It is difficult to come to terms with what I did and what I could have done, should have done, better, sooner, more often, all of that.
My house is a disaster, but it's becoming better. It's looking stronger and more modern. Someday it will be clean and neat and tidy, for all of five minutes. It will have a kitchen that will make us really happy for these upcoming holidays and for many years to come (if the next rains don't make us all sink into the swamp, bless you, Sump Pump).
I hope I can also say that while my life feels in disaster now, it is also becoming better. What hasn't killed me will make me stronger, with some time and thought and looootts of distance. I would very much like to sharpen this edge to make sure I'm ready for the next crop of troublemakers, wherever I find them. I hope my actual college students, whom I'll meet next week, are truly ready to act like and become college students.
I hope I can match the growth I'm seeing in these walls with my own progress toward being a better human being, a better teacher, a better friend. Jim might say a better wife, but he knows better. ;) And if there's a better way to reach these kids and the generations that come, I hope the universe will show me or let me find it.
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