Thursday, April 29, 2004
Do It For The Kids
It's a sad truth that as I've "grown older" I've learned to care less for myself. In high school I loaded myself with all the honors classes every semester and complemented that with a good dose of extracurriculars and plenty of volunteer work. My drive to succeed and accomplish as much as possible made me forget a little bit about who I should be caring for--myself.
This year in college, things got even more out of hand. The average courseload is 15 credits, but my notorious itch to do do do caused me to load up 18 credits in my first semester and 21 credits this semester. Coupled to a new independent life away from home and the burden of trying to make new friends, I think that would be enough to drive anyone into insanity (or complete burn-out), but I didn't stop there. I continued to hold my leadership position with the Sierra Student Coalition, trying to run a national student/teen campaign focusing on clean energy issues. And as if that weren't enough, I also got myself a day job to help foot the horrific $40,000 annual education costs.
For pretty much all of the first semester, and a good chunk of this semester I would overwork myself into extreme exhaustion, despair, anger, and depression. I hated the situation I got myself into, but I didn't see anyway of getting out. I wouldn't quite call myself the happy customer now, but I've learned a little bit about coping and remembering what really matters.
See, for my "day job" I teach. I have my own class of fourth graders whom I teach twice a week. I think this job and these kids might have been one of the best things that happened to me recently. It has reminded me of something pretty important. Knowing that if I don't have my act together, my "kids" surely won't, has reminded me how to stay grounded and take care of myself again. For the sake of trying to make new friends, I used to sacrifice some of my rare spare time to that pursuit.
One notorious case is my lunches with a guy in my linguistics class who lives in my dorm. We used to go have lunch during our hour break between lecture and discussion. It was nice to fill my belly with some food, but other than that it wasn't too fulfilling. I would try to converse with him, but he'd hardly give me more than one word answers. If you want to make me feel worthless or unwanted--do that to me. Sometimes we'd spend the hour in utter silence because I'd be sick of asking him questions to which he would hardly respond. Other times, one of his hypercritical girl-friends would come along and babble, pass judgment and mouth off at me or random people for the whole hour. I guess you could say it was not a happy union.
One day I asked him if he likes my company for lunch. After a prolonged pause, he shrugged and said, "It doesn't really make a difference to me."
"Oh?" I sighed. I guess that wasn't much of a revelation anyway, and I left it at that. After a couple minutes of processing that, he blurted out something of a clarification, "Well, I guess I'd be going to lunch anyway, with or without you, so it doesn't really make much of a difference."
"Oh?"
Another round of silence fell upon us till he gave it another try. "I mean, you don't see my complain, so I guess I don't mind spending it with you."
"Oh..." All of a sudden I felt like turning back the clock and wishing I could reclaim all the time I had wasted trying to foster our "friendship." For months, I would go to work the same day after eating lunch with him, and not surprisingly I would go to work sleep deprived and not particularly happy. But the kids didn't give up on me. We had our ups and downs this year, but mostly ups. The kids still were nice to me. They still told me they liked me as a teacher. They still participated in class, raised great questions, behaved well, and made me feel so proud. They were holding up their end of the bargain, but was I?
The next week, I ran straight out of lecture without saying a word to my "lunch-buddy." In a hurried spree, I rushed back to my dorm, took off my jacket and shoes as fast as I could and plopped into bed. That's right, I napped. It wasn't much--40 minutes at most--but I woke up much more refreshed, and it gave me just the extra energy I needed to give "my kids" the attention they rightly deserved. When I left my dorm to get back to class, one of my neighbors say me and asked what I was doing around here at this time of the day. "I took a nap, I'm working later today, and I just had to do it for the kids," I said, and I smiled.
Though I'm the fourth grade teacher, my students taught me one of the most important lessons I could learn at this point in my life. I need to treat myself well, first. So if that means sacrificing my sad attempts at being social so I can get some extra shut-eye to complement my usually short 5-hour nights of sleep, then so be it. Treating myself well makes me feel so much better about myself. And maybe, once I start learning how to treat myself the way I deserve to be treated, maybe then I'll have an easier time making friends in the first place.
This year in college, things got even more out of hand. The average courseload is 15 credits, but my notorious itch to do do do caused me to load up 18 credits in my first semester and 21 credits this semester. Coupled to a new independent life away from home and the burden of trying to make new friends, I think that would be enough to drive anyone into insanity (or complete burn-out), but I didn't stop there. I continued to hold my leadership position with the Sierra Student Coalition, trying to run a national student/teen campaign focusing on clean energy issues. And as if that weren't enough, I also got myself a day job to help foot the horrific $40,000 annual education costs.
For pretty much all of the first semester, and a good chunk of this semester I would overwork myself into extreme exhaustion, despair, anger, and depression. I hated the situation I got myself into, but I didn't see anyway of getting out. I wouldn't quite call myself the happy customer now, but I've learned a little bit about coping and remembering what really matters.
See, for my "day job" I teach. I have my own class of fourth graders whom I teach twice a week. I think this job and these kids might have been one of the best things that happened to me recently. It has reminded me of something pretty important. Knowing that if I don't have my act together, my "kids" surely won't, has reminded me how to stay grounded and take care of myself again. For the sake of trying to make new friends, I used to sacrifice some of my rare spare time to that pursuit.
One notorious case is my lunches with a guy in my linguistics class who lives in my dorm. We used to go have lunch during our hour break between lecture and discussion. It was nice to fill my belly with some food, but other than that it wasn't too fulfilling. I would try to converse with him, but he'd hardly give me more than one word answers. If you want to make me feel worthless or unwanted--do that to me. Sometimes we'd spend the hour in utter silence because I'd be sick of asking him questions to which he would hardly respond. Other times, one of his hypercritical girl-friends would come along and babble, pass judgment and mouth off at me or random people for the whole hour. I guess you could say it was not a happy union.
One day I asked him if he likes my company for lunch. After a prolonged pause, he shrugged and said, "It doesn't really make a difference to me."
"Oh?" I sighed. I guess that wasn't much of a revelation anyway, and I left it at that. After a couple minutes of processing that, he blurted out something of a clarification, "Well, I guess I'd be going to lunch anyway, with or without you, so it doesn't really make much of a difference."
"Oh?"
Another round of silence fell upon us till he gave it another try. "I mean, you don't see my complain, so I guess I don't mind spending it with you."
"Oh..." All of a sudden I felt like turning back the clock and wishing I could reclaim all the time I had wasted trying to foster our "friendship." For months, I would go to work the same day after eating lunch with him, and not surprisingly I would go to work sleep deprived and not particularly happy. But the kids didn't give up on me. We had our ups and downs this year, but mostly ups. The kids still were nice to me. They still told me they liked me as a teacher. They still participated in class, raised great questions, behaved well, and made me feel so proud. They were holding up their end of the bargain, but was I?
The next week, I ran straight out of lecture without saying a word to my "lunch-buddy." In a hurried spree, I rushed back to my dorm, took off my jacket and shoes as fast as I could and plopped into bed. That's right, I napped. It wasn't much--40 minutes at most--but I woke up much more refreshed, and it gave me just the extra energy I needed to give "my kids" the attention they rightly deserved. When I left my dorm to get back to class, one of my neighbors say me and asked what I was doing around here at this time of the day. "I took a nap, I'm working later today, and I just had to do it for the kids," I said, and I smiled.
Though I'm the fourth grade teacher, my students taught me one of the most important lessons I could learn at this point in my life. I need to treat myself well, first. So if that means sacrificing my sad attempts at being social so I can get some extra shut-eye to complement my usually short 5-hour nights of sleep, then so be it. Treating myself well makes me feel so much better about myself. And maybe, once I start learning how to treat myself the way I deserve to be treated, maybe then I'll have an easier time making friends in the first place.
