Accomplishment!

This might seem like a little thing to some people but to me it's not. I submitted a fellowship/grant application today a full three and a half hours before the deadline. Usually, it's not even a full three minutes, sometimes hardly three seconds. I'm a deadline hound. I need them. I write for them and meet them. I have to have them. I crave them like people crave caffeine and chocolate. Deadlines help me focus. They create priorities. They create of a sense of what I have to do at that moment, so I actually sit down and direct all of my energy one way. It's pretty awesome. I mean, I develop aches and pains and put my body through hell for a short period of time, but when I finally meet that deadline, it is sweet. To be so harried and frustrated but then calm--all at once.

Today was something new. I didn't have that roller coaster ride thrill. I didn't submit a patchwork disaster salvaged only by the clock and inhumane working hours. I actually submitted a piece of writing--like 12 pages--of which I was proud. Writing that involved research and restructing. Writing that my peers gave me feedback on. Writing that I don't feel afraid to read myself or embarrassed for someone else to read. That feeling of peace might just beat the thrill of the impending deadline. Yeah, so it was only three and a half hours, but, people, that's progress. That's what we're going for.

Where's the Payoff for the Learning?! Part II

So...I feel like I just had a therapy session on the tiny sofa in my kitchen. One of my friends came over and asked me to show her what we had learned in the salsa class she missed. That would have involved me dancing alone, demonstrating. I melted. In front of my friend. I said, "I can't, not now." Her response: "Okay, I know you, and I know that you think you are not good with dancing. The more I get to know you, the more I see how deep this is. What happened? What's the story?" I was angry, her words knocked me off balance for a second. We were supposed to be watching a film together, not talk about my dance fears and frustrations. But she was relentless. She has children and was keying into something, partly from her perspective as a parent: this belief that I can't dance goes back to my childhood and it's painful, unbearably so at times.

Without giving a play by play of our conversation, let me say this. I didn't want to have the conversation. It hurt. It was not my idea of a relaxing Sunday night. It involved me talking about my parents, my brother, my aunts, and a few friends who'd teased me. It involved retelling and reliving (sometimes just reliving in my head, because I couldn't bear to tell some of the stories). I felt tears welling up under my eyelids, blinked them back many times. I remember being laughed at. I remember internalizing the supposedly innocent teasing, pulling it in, feeling ashamed that I couldn't move to the beat better. This dancing thing that I'm learning is no ordinary learning. It cuts me to the core. I feel vulnerable, even to talk about my salsa learning. I can't share it with my family and get a response I want, even today.

I was telling my dad a few days ago that pushing myself outside of my "comfort zone," as I called it, and doing salsa was good for me as a teacher, because it reminds me of where students struggle and what I'm asking them to do when I ask them to try out a new genre or form of writing, especially if they already have negative emotions, frustrations regarding writing. His response: "Yeah, so even if it takes you several years to learn what someone else can learn in 5 minutes, it's about trying to learn something new." I changed the topic and tried to banish the toxic words from my mind.

When I saw my professional dancer friend, who sometimes dances salsa with me, I asked her how long it would be before I could be good at salsa, that is, comfortable and confident in my abilities on the dance floor. Her response: "Oh, you'll be amazing in a year, you're learning fast because you practice so much!" I was just like anyone else, a capable learner. Practica, Practica, Practica!

I'm still learning. Every step I take on the dance floor is my therapy. I can think about it all day long, but until I take those dance steps, I'm doing nothing to overcome those doubting emotions. My observant friend generously agreed not to bring up my dancing fears again, as long as I kept on dancing!

In the back of my mind, I'm humming my dancer friend's voice, sing-songing in her Bulgarian accent, "Step, step, step...step, step, step" followed with "1, 2, 3eee, 5, 6, 7."

Peace.

Where's the Payoff for the Learning?!

So it's no surprise to anyone who reads my blog or even skims it that I've taken up salsa. And I have no dance background at all. So it's hard. Ridiculously so. I've been doing it for like 6 months and I still feel uncomfortable when I'm out dancing. I worry that I'm offbeat, like my timing is shit. It's difficult to see the progress I've made and that's sort of frustrating. I can objectively see improvement, but when I step onto the dance floor in someplace other than the dance studio where I practice with my friends/co-learners, it's so damn hard. I'm embarrassed, I'm off-beat, I spin out of control on my spins sometimes (read: most of the time). I feel like I don't know a thing. But the truth is that sometimes I get it right. I get it wrong more than I get it right, mind you. But that shining moment when my feet happen (of their own free will) to land with a measure of elegance and my partner and I are dancing along to what feels like the beat, it's amazing. Just another of my incomplete ramblings on LEARNING. Learning is about getting better, about improving, not getting it perfect but trying to get better. Right? Then how come learning for it's own sake doesn't always have that magic twinkle, that bright shining moment where you feel like you've progressed. Because you haven't progressed enough and you're still terrible. And that's not terribly fun.

The Butter Avenger

Incriminating shot of a student who created drawing capturing her work


Incriminating shot of yet another student creating the Butter Avenger

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2 Questions: Whose idea was this? Does the drawing actually capture her rage?

1 Lesson: Don't steal butter from the staff refrigerator. If you're not 110% sure that the butter is leftover from a school event, just leave it. Let it rot. Let some poor soul clean it out in June when school is out and it has spoiled. Just don't touch it. Listen to your gut. Don't steal butter. Not for students. Not even for insanely rad students who would otherwise have to eat butter-less popcorn.

1 Disclaimer: If you don't understand this blog entry, don't worry about it. You're probably not the intended audience.

in peace and (un)buttered harmony,
DJ

Third Time is a Charm

Yes, this is a photo of the best cable guy ever. And yes, this picture is posed, which makes it even better. I came back to the world of home internet access Friday afternoon after a painful week without it. I was super frustrated because I was having so much trouble getting all of my work done in at school where I have fairly reliable internet access. I spent the week staying at school until 6:00 or 6:30pm trying to get done what I needed to get done. Sucked. I was also coming in earlier than my usual sprint up the stairs at 8:22am, just to get in a few precious minutes with technology. I know. Oh, poor me, life is rough. Stop whining. Still, despite my awareness that one can live without being online most of her waking hours, not having internet access had me in tears, begging the largely unsympathetic Time Warner representatives to please, please get someone to my home soon. In five months in my apartment, this is the third time I'd been without internet for a week or more.

Anyway, here's a shout out to the person photographed above, who not only climbed that ladder to fix my internet connection, but more importantly returned to my house, waited for me, and in general, worked his schedule around my schedule so that I could have a Time Warner service call on Friday afternoon (the only available time slot--or I would have had to wait around 'til the following weekend). I might have died in that week of waiting and hanging out at dimly lit internet cafes that close way before my usual working hours. Some people have a soft spot for techy teachers in whose voices they can hear the tears coming. Apparently, my begging on the phone with the cable guy was not only pathetic, but also polite, respectful, and persuasive on the phone. That or he is just a very nice guy, who made my life functional again, "all in a day's work."

Anyway, I asked to take this photo and conceived of this blog post not solely for the pathos and gratefulness factor or to explain my absence in online communities. Rather, I want to talk for a minute about how struck I was by just how much it affected my life to not have internet. It was actually more than an small irritation. Here are the things I missed out on last week: witty gmail chats with friends, funny and/or academic/college-related chats on AIM with students (ahem, procrastinators!), paying my bills, checking my bank account balance, participating in web chats on a pedagogy issue for a grant, online researching for a different grant I'm writing, looking up books and other stuff on Amazon.com, spending my Teachers Choice $$ on Newegg.com, watching YouTube videos my friends send, actually responding to anyone's email thoughtfully (and not from my phone), sending important emails related to a new job, making a donation to the inauguration that might have gotten me a ticket (not likely, but still!), and planning lessons for class that included web information and resources.

That's a pretty long list. Those are all of the things I was trying fiercely to fit into my "connected" school day that I usually do at home. Ahhh, access in all its complicated definitions. What I missed most in my offine time: my goofy friends and students, saying hello and telling about their days for a few seconds every night. Wasn't such a big deal not to lesson plan or pay my bills...

Holi-daze

So I've been a little absent from the blogosphere. The holidays have left me more than a little in a daze. I went to Missouri to visit the family but playing the "child" for a smidge over a week was pretty much exhausting. I felt like the kid who just wanted to go hide in her room and pretend she was living her life. It's not like I didn't have tech access, I did, I was online--chatting, finding solace in the similar frustrations of my single friends who had descended upon their family homes for a few days of "togetherness."

Truth is, I love my family. I can handle them in small doses, but when I'm there I start feeling claustrophobic, like I can't breathe, can't think. I'm totally out of my element. The home that once felt familiar doesn't feel familiar in the same ways any more. It feels like I'm a guest in someone else's home, and I am. From the smallest choices every day to that overwhelming feeling that I have no space of my own. Ahhhh, holi-daze. Struggle breathing.