Alone (or: On The Fence) (or: Why Do I Make Everything A Crisis?)

I'm here to say that I survived my first week of classes - the ones I teach and the ones I take.  After a few days of getting up at 4:00 a.m. (!!) and pretty much freaking out internally 24/7, I slept in until 9:30 today.  It was amazing.  I won't be able to do that on a regular basis because of my K-8 job, so I'll take it while I can get it.

This is going to be one of my use-the-blog-as-therapy posts.  You have been officially notified.

I am extremely lucky in that I really like and admire the other first-time TA's (we take a 3-hour class together each week and will be observing each other's classes).  There isn't even "that one person" who is inevitably the irritating one in the group.  But they are young and ambitious and planning their PhD's and forming book clubs and talking about moving to other grad programs across the country.  And I am just not.  They are fantastic.  They are brilliant.  They are the best group of people.  And they are exhausting.  Don't get me wrong, I am very much a part of the group, but I'm also 500 years older than they are, and we all know it.  They don't make me feel alone.  I do.

I have the type of personality that pretty much absorbs the group "vibe," so to speak, and I have realized that I can teach a class and feel really good about it, even feel like I have clear direction on the next class and my next steps, and then get around my colleagues and end up stressing over graduate exams I do not even plan to take.  This is a problem with my personality.  The good part is that I can (usually) tell when people are down or in trouble, and I'm able to try to help them.  The bad part is that other people's feelings can sometimes carry me away with them and play with my personal confidence.

Lucy Loo supports my laziness.

I have also found myself getting quite comfortable in between two different academic worlds, or trains of thought.  Although I like my graduate program, and I enjoy analysis, and I can talk about theory relatively comfortably, I also think there is a place for the practical.  I spend much of my time teaching kids how to do things, specific things.  We write for a reason.  Format exists for a reason.  Here are some tips and some tried and true methods to use.  Let's not even worry about existentialism right now.

Then I find myself (oh, last night) in a very heavy theory class for three hours, with a young professor who really admires himself and his oh-so-unique thoughts, and I had a hard time.  I'm usually the active listener in class, nodding, smiling, raising my hand.  Last night I was just trying not to roll my eyes or become a b*tch.  This is one of those "problems" about returning to grad school later in life, post-career, or post-jobs-in-the-real-world.  And I spent the entire drive home wondering - yet again!  this is getting old! - if I made a mistake going back to school.

No, I didn't.  This is where I should be.  I should be teaching these freshmen because, unlike my prof last night, I can relate to them.  Or, at least, I can try.

This theory class is going to kill me.  Now, in addition to all the work, I have to overcome my pride, my ego, and my bad attitude.

Yes, I plan on using this picture forever.  I will never get tired of it.  I love it too much.

In life, I seem unable to find a middle ground.  A place where I am just happy and content and myself.  I'm not the tangled mess of emotions I once was, by any means.  I am comfortable raising the BS flag on both myself and others (one of the precious few good things about getting older).  But I also seem to continually have to talk myself out of crises (last night) (and here on the blog).

Remember when I came to terms with the thought of getting a B in the online summer class?  And I was so proud of myself?  Yeah. 

I ended up doing homework in Croatia.  And I got an A.