Lately, I have been doing a terrible job of blogging. When I work at Summerbridge, every last bit of my energy is zapped by the end of the school day. There is so much that needs to be done, so much that I need to do for others, that there is barely any room in my day to do anything for me. I have wanted this blog to be a place where I can take time to reflect on the day and the adventures it entails. I wanted to carve out this little space that is just for me to process and think and wonder about life. Yet, I wasn't using this space to decompress and to make sure that my days included time for myself. I wasn't blogging very much at all, and instead, found myself sleeping or watching television. What a waste.
As I move closer to the beginning of my third year as a doctorate student, I can see quite clearly the necessity of this space and recognize my need to work harder at coming to this space each day to record my thoughts and to allow myself room to process the day in silence.
Before I went back to school on Wednesday to work, Brian noted that I seem to have a sense of purpose when I am on campus. Today, I felt that sense of purpose as I walked from the train to work. At work, I was able to get so much done. It felt good, and it motivated me to do work at the apartment and to blog right now. It is amazing how doing things makes me want to do more things, whatever they are, and being static, unproductive, useless, makes me feel like doing nothing. I much prefer the first over the latter.
I just started my workout today when a group of high schoolers who are (I assume) attending Governer's school at Lehigh came up to me and asked if I i knew of a building with a half number on it. They were doing a scavenger hunt. I had no idea what they were talking about. I said no. The guy who asked responded "actually?" in a tone that I found less than polite.
I continued on my way toward the first set of stairs where the hardcore workout begins and a group walked down the stairs, completely in my way, and one girl said something to the effect of "she's the one who wouldn't help us right?" Um, hello, I can hear you, and what is this King's Cross Station? How the hell am I supposed to know where the building with fractions for an address is? I responded "I didn't help you, because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about."
They went on there way, and I continued my workout. As I ran, I could feel my anger getting the better of me. I just hate when people are rude like that. Plus, all day I was being interrupted by people at work who had questions they could have answered for themselves. As I ran, I prayed and I wondered if perhaps I was being too critical of others and not critical enough of myself. Perhaps what I needed to be today, was patient.
I was reminded of the clip in Evan Almighty, where Morgan Freeman, playing God, tells Lauren Graham, Evan's wife, that when a person prays for courage...you know what, I won't do it justice...here's the clip.
The bottom line is, life is all about opportunities. Here I am, praying for the ability to be more patient, and at the same time, I am ignoring the opportunities to exercise patience. I let the actions of others dictate my mood, and worse than that, I allowed my actions and reactions to be filled with anger and with annoyance instead of with compassion and kindness.
Am I preaching? I like to think not. I think sometimes I find it difficult to know where the line between patient and annoyed should be. When does it stop becoming patience and start becoming self deprecating? When do I stop giving others unlimited chances and start recognizing the value of my own time and standards and start standing up for those values? These questions plagued me as I ran up stairs, walked hills, and just generally took in the coolness of the evening.
I guess my gut tells me that kindness is always the better way, I just don't always know how to exercise kindness, particularly in the face of ignorance, disrespect, and incompetence.
As I walked and thought of these things, I hoped I would run into some more students so I could practice the patience I lacked previously. A group did find me. They came up to the top of the stairs and a girl and I stared at each other from afar for a bit. Turns out, she was mesmerized by some dear that were close at hand, and I thought she might be someone I knew. She flagged me down and politely asked for help finding a building with a half number on it. I gave her group the best advice I could and moved on.
Later, Court, Britt and I walked down to the cup, where apparently all the governer's school kids who think they are cool go to hang out. I saw the people who were rude to me, and although at first we stared at each other awkwardly as we passed through the doorway, I stopped the first guy and asked if they found what they were looking for. He said they didn't but the person behind him did. That guy stepped forward and I asked where it was. He explained it and then said he took a picture, took out his phone, and showed us. It was actually a pleasant interaction.
I felt like, perhaps for the first time all day, I had finally seized an opportunity to be more patient and to put good out into the world instead of staining it with my lack of compassion.
Date Taken: 5/26/12
Setting: Headed to Manayunk
Thoughts: Brian and I were headed to Manayunk to meet up with Veronica and go to Cass and Andrew's place for a shindig. Whilst in Market East, we came across this sticker. I am always curious to know how a sticker came to be in any particular location and how any alterations or additions occurred and under what circumstances. It appears that someone tried to remove this sticker, first by trying to remove the entire thing, then perhaps when that proved too difficult, the person took out a key and tried to scratch it off, or at least damage it enough to let everyone know how pissed off the sticker made him or her.
This sticker and the attempted destruction of it epitomizes the state of our political and economic climate right now. It seems like politicians have resorted to 5 year old logic when debating and designing policies that will affect the entire country. In this sticker, protestors are taking a peaceful jab about the system itself. There have been, like in so many peaceful demonstrations in our history (civil rights comes to mind), instances of police brutality. Occupy protestors, for the most part, are just trying to bring light to the fact that the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. It isn't right. It isn't in anyone's best interest to cut funding to education, to make it more difficult for lower and middle class kids to get a higher education, to destroy human life abroad, to deny people medical insurance, to allow a failing economy to cripple individuals and families, making it increasingly more difficult for them to pay off their debts (hello student loans), find shelter, eat.
Our basic human freedoms are being reduced, and we are being told that it is in our best interest to either not know about it or to accept it blindly. Mitt Romney has an elevator for his cars...in one of his mansions. Last week, I passed a homeless man asking for food and change...he was in a wheelchair...because he only has one leg. Yup, all seems right with the world. How can people with every opportunity, every advantage, every amenity and comfort tell our entire population what is right for us when it comes to reproductive freedoms and healthcare, marriage rights, religion, education?
Every day I read about or Brian tells me about another horrifying, aggressively ignorant action taking place in the political realm. It is depressing. I often stop reading or tell him I don't want to hear it. Brian tells me, and I know he is right, that this is what they want. They - those precious few who will determine if I live my entire life in debt, who will make sure I am vaginally probed if I ever decide to have an abortion, who will devalue my job as an educator by cutting funding to the one thing that can save us all. They. They want us to be uninformed. They want us to feel hopeless. They want to shame us or force us into giving up our basic human freedoms. They want us to see the yellow and orange and red of a terrorism alert meter and sign away our rights in exchange for the illusion of protection.
So when I see a sticker like this, I actually feel a little uplifted, a little hopeful. There are people out there with a sense of humor in the face of ignorance and hatred and greed. There are people who are willing to fight, especially for the things we should never have to fight for - like the right not to have the shit kicked out of you for peacefully wanting high powered executives to stop cheating us all.
The claw marks through this sticker only serve to demonstrate the idea that those in power, those in favor of an ultra conservative government that denies our rights and encourages us to hate others, resort to the same tactics over and over. They try to discredit, cover up, destroy their opposition. They resort to violence, to scare tactics, to bullying.
I am tired of a world in which these kinds of tactics are okay, a world in which I am going to have a phd and will be dangerously close to living on the streets because I have crippling student debt, expensive health insurance payments, and no job prospects. I don't know how much or what I can do to make a difference in this regard, but I do know that the first step is to get and stay informed and the second is to write about all this information, process it, and share it with others.
Date Taken: 5/23/12
Setting: McGillan's Bar
Thoughts: I started this post the other day, and now I don't really want to write about this day at all. It was a great day - I got to spend time with Brian, walk around the city, eat tacos and drink beer at an interesting bar. But, I suppose that a consequence of writing on a delay and talking about past events several days later is that sometimes, I just don't want to talk about those days anymore.
Today, I spent the entire day allowing an email to annoy me. Having access to my email on my phone is great sometimes, but most of the time it just makes me reachable at all hours in all places. I have developed a habit of checking my email as soon as I wake up, largely because I was a TA for two early morning classes this past year, and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any messages from the professors. I hate this habit. I am going to stop it.
I didn't even read the full email this morning, I just caught the first line and was disgusted. In the scheme of things, the line I read was fairly innocuous, but it pissed me off all day. I am tired of the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything sacred about authority anymore. I'm not saying we should ever question it, but why do people assume that they somehow have a right to question every single little decision that is made. If I ever did that to my coaches, they would have looked at me and laughed and told me to lace up my shoes because I was going to be running.
Sometimes, I wish it was that simple, that I could just be stone faced all the time and say, well you won't need your stick today, just bring your running shoes. There is a pain and anguish in running sprints... full field sprints...repeated full field sprints...in the heat of a summer afternoon on the turf. It is the great equalizer. It doesn't really matter how good you are at running, it is about not breaking mentally. It is a punishment that people fear and respect at the same time. It is a tangible and instant consequence for misbehaving, for being rude, for giving up and not trying. It is a message to a player and a team that if one person gives up, then we all suffer. It is a message that we all have a role to play and we damn well better get on board with that role. It is a message that we are adults now and mommy and daddy can't step in and make everything better.
I sometimes have a coaching fantasy where the players have left all kinds of trash on the sidelines. When they come back for the next session, each piece of disgusting trash is lined up in front of them and they run a full field sprint for each piece of trash. I know that is probably an odd fantasy. I think fantasy is actually too strong of a word. What I like about this idea is that it makes every single person on the end line responsible for mess, for the disrespect they show to the staff and the school and each other when they leave their garbage on the field like spoiled brats. It is my way of breaking down the bad habits and attitudes of superiority that people so often feel and in its place, building self respect and discipline and pride.
I want to use this ideology and this method in all scenarios, not just in sports. Running is a punishment that puts people in their place and makes them better at the same time - more humble, more mentally strong. I want so badly to just say, you know what, you're being insolent and selfish, get on the line.
Perhaps even in saying all this I am being inherently hypocritical. I can feel the tone of my own words oozing with disdain and a sense of superiority. Maybe I am a hypocrite, but I am a hypocrite with the decency to have some self respect. I am tired of rolling over and letting people walk all over me, while I sit there thinking I deserve to be treated as an inferior. I forget my own cunning, my wit, my ability to manipulate language. I forget that sometimes, I get to have things that I want without having to explain myself. I forget that I do things for other people all the time, almost exclusively at the expense of my happiness or comfort. Sometimes, I can't give in, even when a situation is silly or inane. Sometimes, I want, quite simply, for people to stop being so damn useless and lazy and pretentious and start actually contributing to society. That would be nice.
Saw these ads on the subway...
So apparently little girls, and black girls in particular are born to cook, and little boys, particularly white boys are born to be rock stars...seems fair...and by fair, I mean the perfect illustration of how gender inequality still exists. On top of the whole white boys rock and black girls cook thing, these images also tell us that boys should show very little emotion, they should play it cool, even hide their eyes so others cannot see them, while girls should be happy to cook, excited to take care of others and that this domestic existence is the epitome of greatness for her. Awesome. Well these ads suck.
 Erik was the commencement speaker in 2007 when I graduated from Lehigh. The day was one of the most beautiful I have seen at Lehigh. It was cool out, the sky was bright blue and filled with clouds, birds were flying overhead as we sat on the football field. He was, plan and simple, and inspiration, adding to one of the most special days of my life in a profound way. Really Values.Com...really??
Adam Bender: has one leg. overcame cancer.
Oral Lee Brown: gave a future to 19 poor kids.
Erik Weihenmayer: blind mountain climber. Climbed Everest.
Michael J. Fox: living and working with Parkinson's.
Ghandi: ...he's freakin Ghandi.
Helen Keller: Blind. Deaf. Inspirational.
Alex Scott: Child. Lived as a cancer survivor. Philanthropist.
Jackie Robinson: The first black professional baseball ball player
Marlon Shirley: One leg. Still runs.
Babe Ruth: An orphan. A hall of famer.
Kermit the Frog: a puppet.
According to the most recent Muppets installment, he is a pessimistic puppet to boot. Yeah, he really deserves to be up on a values billboard. What does eating flies and dating a pig have to do with living out your dreams? Also the whole dates a pig line just rubs me the wrong way. Yes, Ms. Piggy is literally a pig puppet, but her character is constantly scrutinized. She is loud, she knows what she wants and is not shy about it, she is physical, she is demanding...and of course, she eats a lot. I can't help but think that adding this line to the billboard has some sort of subversive meaning. Given the fact that having Kermit the frog is on a values billboard among the ranks of actual a variety of human beings that contributed to society in a tangible way makes absolutely no sense and is actually a little offensive, I can't help but think that the dates a pig line is also meant to undercut Ms. Piggy and insinuate something negative about the fact that she is a vocal, powerful woman. The medium is the message people. The fact that the billboard states dating her is part of Kermit living his dream is irrelevant. The billboard itself and the ludicrousness of including Kermit in this campaign is what gives the Ms. Piggy line an alternate meaning.
Perhaps I am simply reading too much into this whole values billboard thing, but the fact remains, this Kermit poster is ridiculous. So are the Shrek and Incredibles posters. Including fictional characters among the likes of Ghandi and Helen Keller degrades theirs and others' actual accomplishments. Ghandi went on hunger strikes for peace, sacrificing his own body and living a life of servitude for others...Shrek...is a cartoon Ogre...voiced by a wealthy, elitist white man who has probably never been hungry in his entire life.
And now, to drive home the ridiculousness of the Kermit billboard...
Ghandi:
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
Kermit the Frog:
"Hi Ho, Kermit the Frog here.”
Date Taken: 4/3/12
Setting: South Philly
Thoughts: It has been a while since my last post, too long in fact. I found myself caught up this week in all kinds of things happening outside of myself. I took these pictures with a different mindset, but now reflecting back on them, I can't remember entirely what that was. As I look at them now, what I like is the rosy shade of pink that stands as the focal point of each image. The sun plays a prominent role in all of the images, and in fact, was the driving factor behind the images. In the first image, the sun is still rising, casting a glow across this building that made it feel other worldly, exotic.
In the next image, the backs of these blossoms are light up and the flowers themselves shielded my eyes from the sun itself. The next image, taken only seconds after the one before it, has an eerie feel. The sun, now a focal point of the frame, caused the gradient and tone to change dramatically. The colors, simultaneously muted and lush, give the image a sense of depth and a decidedly more serious tone.
This week, I found myself feeling out of sorts, desperately seeking out some space of my own, in search of something I know intimately yet cannot fully describe or define. This last image sums up that feeling. The flowers and leaves and branches are both seemingly being pushed to the outside of the frame as the sun bores down on the viewer directly and closing in on the small circle of open space that exists between this tree and the one across the street. The colors make me think of a fall evening after a long day at school and a long soccer or field hockey practice. The day is fading, the night is rising up to take its place, and there is a moment, just before the day turns, when the light still offers the sense that there are possibilities, options. The sense that there is still time before the sky turns black - time for play, for rest, for adventuring, for thinking.
This image seems to encapsulate that moment, the just-before-it-turns-dark fall moment. This week, I had an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia, yet I also felt as though things were falling away, leaving a gaping hole that made me feel unsettled, exposed.
In a time when I am attempting to become an adult, a time in which I am welcoming the chance to make mistakes as well as hating the mistakes I make, I find that the most unsettling element of my transition is the simultaneous feeling of being bombarded by more than I can handle and losing too much of what has been static and stable. It has been confusing and frustrating to feel so transient, to feel like there is no place for me to fully recharge, to think, to relax and rest. I am constantly on high alert, tip-toeing around so as not to disturb others or their space. Every mistake I make gets magnified when it is in the space of others, and it is difficult to know what my own successes and failures are. If it is my classroom or my home, I at least know what is my fault and what isn't.
On top of feeling displaced, I hold myself to high standards to the point that I find it difficult to let things go, to allow my mistakes to just be mistakes. I dwell on those mistakes not only because I am disappointed in myself, but also because I know that all of my actions have ramifications. Much like in sports, my actions affect others. My movements change the movements of others. My decisions alter the decisions of others. My choices, my moods, my opinions extend out beyond just me. As I try to carve out a little space for myself, a little world in which I feel totally and utterly myself, I find myself thinking about all the people in the world that have substantially more difficult tasks and lives and hardships than I do at this moment. I feel guilty for dwelling on my pain, for complaining so much that the act of complaining has become unstoppable word vomit. Despite this nagging guilt, I know that my own trials are serious in my world. As I draw nearer and neared to my own breaking point, I try to remind myself that while others suffer if I make bad choices, others benefit when I make positive choices. I am reminded of air travel emergency procedures. They encourage a person to put on his or her oxygen mask before helping others. Right now, I need to find a way to put my own oxygen mask on, otherwise, I can't help anyone else.
After reading this article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/11/us-soldier-killing-afghanistan-children?CMP=twt_fd
I am left feeling more than a little foolish. There are so many injustices in the world, so many woefully inadequate circumstances, so many tragedies, and her I sit, enjoying a plentiful meal, enjoying the creature comforts of my room and watching TV on demand. Yesterday, I upbraided myself for being so spoiled, for my flagrant disregard for the opportunities I have.
This semester has been challenging. Now, in the last part of the second year of my phd program, I am feeling like I am not getting the education I should be getting. So much of my focus in the last few years has been teaching. I have a knack for it. I can read people, I understand the way to hold peoples' attention, pose thought provoking questions, scaffold a lesson so that skills and requisite knowledge are built in order to perform or achieve a later task. I know all this, and yet, it doesn't seem to be a priority for many professors. It frustrates me to no end to feel that in class we talk in circles about asinine minutiae.
Maybe it's the athlete in me that desires an end goal, a plan, a "back on the line" atmosphere in the classroom. Whatever is motivating my feelings, I have them, and I feel guilty that I am bored out of my mind in class, that I do other work, send emails, write blog posts while I am in there. I participate when I feel compelled, I take notes, but I am in a different headspace than I was in when I was taking English classes at Lehigh, where the professors changed my world every time I walked into their classrooms.
I know that this semester's classes are part of a much larger goal to become a professor. In order to become a professor, I need my phd. In order to receive my phd, I need to finish the requisite amount of credits. In order to receive those credits, I need to take these classes. I get it, but there is something so horrifying in the idea of just doing the bare minimum to get by. "Getting by" is antithetical to my personality, to the person I like to think I am - the perfectionist, the goal-oriented, ambitious woman.
I hate feeling like I am wasting my time. Yet, simultaneously, I am enjoying the time I would be spending on school work. I am loving the personal life I am cultivating. I am loving time with my friends, with my partner. I am loving just laying down next to my kitty and snuggling with her. And still, I feel an overarching sense of guilt for not working harder, for relaxing too much, or spending time with loved ones, or organizing my room and my life. I can't help but feel that I am somehow wasting this opportunity, an opportunity so many people are denied. So here I am, complaining about a three day a week class schedule, some school reading and some boring classes, and there is a father and child in Afghanistan that are mourning the loss of 11 members of their family because someone they didn't know and didn't ask to be there came in a murdered them, point blank. I know what an incredible opportunity it is to have the kind of education I have had from preschool through phd. I want to educate myself so I can pay forward that education and help people to be able to make their own decisions. So, I suppose I am left wondering how to reconcile my feelings of guilt and my feelings of frustration over wasted class time. In the end, I suppose it is a petty concern, but one that I will have to come to grips with in order to proceed both as a student and as an educator.
As I sit in my doctoral classes, I can't help but wonder how our system of higher education came to embody the complete opposite style of teaching as primary and secondary education. So often, professors are not teachers, they are scholars whose depth and breadth of knowledge that labels them as experts in a particular field. However, just because someone is an expert in a particular subject matter does not make them a good teacher, or even a sub-par one.
The result of professors who are not teachers: a mass quantity of students losing out on opportunities to learn, to understand, to grow, to change, to grapple with real world problems and philosophical notions. So often, I see students sitting in class bored, zoned out, sleeping, or doing other work - all of which I am guilty. Is it wrong to want my professors to be compelling, to capture my attention with their enthusiasm, with the way they distribute knowledge and foster a classroom environment in which all participants contribute to learning?
As I embark on the second semester of my 8th year as a college student, I can't help but feel exhausted by the lack of teaching techniques so many of my professors have displayed. At Lehigh, I had some of the most engaging and brilliant professors. I was excited to go to their classes, and when I left, I felt enlightened, challenged, I felt like I had learned. I looked at those professors and thought, that, that is what I want to do. I found, through them, my calling to become an educator. Now, as I look back at professors I have had, the ones that stood in front of the room and droned on and on, went off on unintelligible tangents, and entertained asinine student questions, I think, that is why I need to become an educator. I hate to imagine myself as better than anyone. In this case, I must keep my ego and anger in check, but I must also acknowledge that I feel cheated by the system. I feel that I could do better. I could teach better. I could educate.
Is it wrong to think this? Is it wrong to believe I have the capacity to be outstanding as an educator? Is it wrong that I am typing this post in the middle of a class?
American education, in general, is woefully inadequate. I want to become an educator so that I can change lives in a positive way and so that I can change the system for the better. Cliche? Perhaps...but necessary.
|
RSS Feed