A year and semester in review

Friday, December 17, 2010
9:06pm

I handed in my final grades today and submitted everything... quiet a process, took me about 17 hours in the last two days. For the first time during the semester, I was "al punto de lagrimas" over school stuff. But minus a few touch ups which will take about ten minutes, I am finished, and it feels... strange.

I know so many times in my mind I've felt tired but instead of slowing down, I've gone harder. Like on the treadmill at the gym. OK, so if I'm getting tired, my solution is not to just make it another ten minutes at this speed, but to crank it up five notches so I know I am capable of more. Exhaustion is a state of mind. That's true, but I am slowing down for a couple weeks. Getting into the slowness is strange for me.

Frequently, since adolescence really, I've had the image of myself at the bottom, like a tree trunk, and all my activities, responsibilities, obligations above my head. My job was to keep it all whirling, as quickly as possible, so it wouldn't fall and crash on me. I had been fascinated by centrifugal force since my dad took me on some ride that spins and the floor falls out, and everyone gets sucked back against the wall. Well, except me, I was too little to absorb as much of the force... I was three... so my dad had to keep hiking me up with his foot. But anyway... at some point everyone needs to slow down, and I intuitively feel that's what I most need to do for myself this break. It feels a little selfish... I should be... working, studying, teaching something... not sitting here waiting for tea to boil with no plans to go anywhere or accomplish anything. But somehow... it just feels imperative and I am given to following the whimsical inclinations of my soul. Always have been.

So to start my threeish weeks of reflectiveness, I thought I'd do a year/semester in review thing. The year has seen a lot of changes for me, and the semester has been rough to say the least.

I started the year off with a lot of changes in January. I was a recent graduate from WVU with a BA in English and Spanish. I remember not giving a rat's ass about graduation, but I welcomed the excuse to buy a new outfit and get dolled up and have my family take pictures of me. Moment of truth, I can be a little egotistical every now and then. You know, we always talk against any form of narcissism or egoism, but usually I think a loving family and group of friends tends to foster that. I'm not saying you have to be the absolute center of your own universe, and perceivably everyone else's, but if you're lucky enough to be surrounded in love, I think you also learn to love and appreciate yourself. Also, John and I were somewhat newly engaged... with a ring now, anyway. I was trying to adapt my mind to everyone's congratulatory enthusiasm. It overwhelmed me. Like in theatre, I always loved to put on the show, but hated being in the receiving line when people came out and kissed you and fussed over you. Wonderful, that natural boundary that the stage draws between you and the audience... Anyway, when I came back to Morgantown from break, I began working at Barnes and Noble and Panera, simultaneously. I was also writing for The Dominion Post and teaching about ten fitness classes a week. Eventually, I began to whittle things out of my schedule and eventually I was just working at BN and teaching fitness.

Working at Panera was about the most miserable experience I've ever had. Never had I hated a job more... and I've had probably more than 20 now. I had never been treated like such an object in all my life. I'm certainly willing to work hard for my employers, but when you spend eight hours a day somewhere and the people there don't even take the time to get to know you, it's hard to stick around. I've been fortunate in my other jobs to have been with at least some good people on the staff. Anyway, it gave me an appreciation for what a lot of people go through. I hope I never have to work there or somewhere like there again.

Barnes and Noble, by contrast, I enjoyed very much. The people there were warm, and everyone was unique and interesting to talk to. Everyone had something stimulating to say. Kate was one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure of working for. She was second only to Santina and Deanna, and that's because those two women took me so entirely under their wings and taught me from scratch everything I now know about the fitness industry. But Kate was fair, hardworking but not anal, and seemed to enjoy talking when things were slow. She was really just about my speed, and that goes a long way when it comes to being somewhere for a 6-8 hour shift.

I continued at Barnes and Noble through August, when I quit for GTA orientation. There was something wholesome and calming about knowing everyday that I would go to work, be stimulated, and still know that I could accomplish what I was doing. I wasn't making a lot of money, but I always knew I'd be able to pay the rent, the bills, buy the groceries. I was making it completely on my own for the first time, and it felt good, even if John and I were sharing an upstairs apartment in a duplex with my ex-boyfriend. I don't want to put too much emphasis on the ex-ness of it, because it's not like that really. Nonetheless, it was a little odd to me to be sharing a room with my fiance in just the next room over. Especially since the ex and I have always always always had some sharp-tonguedness between the two of us. It's one zinger after the other, and in some ways that's interesting and fun but in other ways it's like... please, I'm human, give me a break.

I guess I should mention, too, that I moved out of Terrace Heights in the spring of 2010. I lived there for four years, almost my entire under graduate career. I had various roommates and various roommate situations. By the end it was almost perfect. Carman, Katie, and I meshed pretty well, and I only wish we could have found that grouping much earlier. It was nice to live with two other driven young women who cared about their families, friends, fitness, and academics, and when I say cared, I mean... really cared. Like, it's not just something they would have written on their facebook profiles to sound cute.

So that makes three homes in 2010. Terrace, Pearl Avenue, and just before school started, John and I moved into a trailer here in St. Clair's Village, hence the title of this blog. I was hesitant to move here, because it meant letting my parents help us. They took out a loan for the trailer, and we pay the lot rent. The idea is they sell it back in the end and get their money back, so they don't lose much, if anything. And really, by the time we're ready to get out, John and I should be in a much better position to help with the cost of it. I almost refused, but I think I realized that Pearl Avenue, living with at least one person, and occasionally others because I couldn't have the end say in everything even though I wasn't totally cool with the vagabond attitude most times, just wasn't going to be conducive to my success in graduate school. And if I was going to give it a go, I wanted to really do it. And this place feels like home. Nowhere else has since I started school. Terrace Heights just started to after four years, but still not... not with the noisy neighbors who really weren't concerned in the least about anyone but themselves, not with the roommates who didn't care about your personal wellness... like I said, over the four years, there were a lot of people in and out of that place. It started to feel like home, but never quite. I guess, even here, it feels a little transient. I don't really plan to be here more than a couple years, but for now... it's nice to have "our" kitchen, "our" bedroom, "our" living room, and not have to conform to the way others are living. It's like Teresa said when we met up the other day, a lot of times, when you're living with someone other than family, people just don't care how they treat you. John and I care about each other and one another's wellness, so it's easy to be considerate of one another in the home environment. From October to late November, Jesse was here with us. She's been the only other person to ever stay here for any length of time.

So the semester... was rough. I am glad to let it go. Today when it was over, I nearly started weeping in the car. It's like everything I haven't had time to deal with came up all at once... now that I have time. Like when people get sick after their adrenaline slows down following a period of stress... they get sick when they can. I get reflective... when I can, although in the moment, I'm usually fairly able to push on through and get done with whatever is at hand. I can, for the most part, order my emotions to take a time out, to wait for me to deal with them later. By about Week 6, I already knew I needed a new semester. I'd been home a couple times already for emergency situations, both with my grandmother and John's family. It was getting me down emotionally as well as behind academically. Having those external stressors also made it more difficult for me to interact with my own peers. Not only did I have the language barrier, but my mind was just soooooo not on heading out to the bar (even though I did every opportunity I got). I was still mentally in my grandmother's hospital room, in the car making that dreadful trip to check on John's family. Sometimes there's a lot I can't really talk about, and that gets heavy to drag around. I sometimes just want to rid myself of it, put it out there, walk away. But it affects others, too, and so I don't. Also, on the few occasions I have shared some of the stuff I'm sort of talking around right now, I just get these looks like omfg... seriously? And well, yeah. For real. These things happen. It's much less rare than you may think, so don't look at me like that. Anyway. Keeping my mouth shut gets to be an effort. I made a couple trips home for Jesse this semester, too, and while I'm glad to do that, I could feel myself falling back to where I was the second semester of my freshman year. Just so much death and heaviness to deal with all at once, and here I've already been through so much change-- moving in with the new fiance, giving up my fitness gigs, taking on a position as a Spanish teacher. I've always been someone to have several irons in the fire, and suddenly I'd taken them all out but one. That's scary, because then that one really has to work out.

I remember, before the semester was getting started, I'd made a plan to run a 10K. I'd never run that far, at least not competitively before. It was a completely arbitrary goal, of course. I'm not on a team. I didn't have anyone coming to see me race. It wasn't for any Susan G. Komen something or other. I remember being really insistent on putting in the correct distance and time for training and John being perplexed and perhaps even a little miffed about it. He asked why it was so important, and I said that I just really needed to be able to work towards something I knew I could accomplish, since I was getting ready to go into something I had no idea whether I could do or not. He said OK, and was supportive. He came to my race, took pictures, and the thing I remember most about crossing the finish line was his very proud voice cheering for me. I made it through my first 10K, Vomit Hill and all, and I made it through my first semester of graduate school, too.

So... academically... it's been, an interesting semester. I wasn't too into taking bibliography or teaching methods, but they turned out to be my better classes. Honestly, methodology for me, was just one of those easily attainable courses for me for bumping my grade... at least I hope so. Perhaps I speak preemptively. But there's something calming about a course that basically just involves reading, understanding, and regurgitating. Those sorts of classes were always fine for me. Biby was tough. I read Gone with the Wind for the first time this semester, and to look back at the time I put into those 954 pages makes the semester seem much longer after all. I enjoyed the book; it was good to spend time reading again, even though that meant pushing myself to sit there longer than I wanted to a lot of times. Tania es una profesora muy "exigente" como dicimos en el departamento. I had her last year and strongly disliked her. I hated the interpretive presentation assignment; it seemed elementary and impertinent, and because my groupmates had issues going on at the time, it threatened to bring my whole grade down. Anyway, I like her much more at the graduate level. She seemed to like my final paper. I got a 30/30, don't think I've ever been handed a paper back with a perfect score before. Of course, I don't think the paper was perfect. I have my own criticisms that I'd have worked with given more time. However, coming from her, I was happy with it. It was nice to do a paper on my own topic, to compare two characters from two novels, to revisit an old favorite with a critical new eye. But I digress into extreme nerdishness here. I thought Span 493 would be a lot more interesting, but I really disliked the course. I don't dislike the professor, but the formatting was off for me. I think there are better ways to learn culture than to read hundreds of pages in articles each week only to sit through classmates' presentations. I have no idea how the grading is going to go in there, and while I'm slightly worried, I'm hoping for the best. I'll be satisfied with a B. As long as it's not a C. Can't have C's in graduate school.

Teaching Spanish was a new experience. It was intimidating at first, not because they're close to my age, not because I had to be in front of people, but because I'm a West Virginia girl, too. What impetus do any of them have for trusting my authority on a language I'm still struggling to control and comprehend? I made mistakes every day. I'm a generally dingy person. I'll look at page "53" and say "page 82." So I tell them to open their books to the wrong pages, tell them to do the wrong activities... all that. I don't think it makes me a bad teacher, but they had to get used to me being like that. I don't know how not to be like that to be honest. After all this time, still in my fitness classes I'll say OK, let's do 16 tricep dips on the left side now and then proceed to do 16 bicep curls on the right side... I found that I purposely put a distance between myself and the students in the beginning... the safety of the stage's edge that used to keep me safe from the audience. I was fine singing and dancing in front of them on stage like that, although in an informal, social setting I never would. It was similar with teaching. I could perform just fine, as long as I had some distance. So in the beginning I dressed better. I was a lot more conscientious with trying to maintain a more formal atmosphere in the class. After about six weeks, once I saw that they were going to do what I asked and weren't going to eat me, I relaxed that. And I have to say... I don't believe I'll ever be someone who can maintain professionalism for any length of time. I heard some students the other day discussing whether they'd studied for the listening exam. I just wanted to look at them stupidly and say, "How the hell do you study for a listening exam?" I think I generally do forget about rules and roles a lot, in ways that I've noticed through time can make people a little uncomfortable at times, so I sometimes go overboard in trying to maintain them. I get to the balance eventually, though.

I don't know what I think about teaching Spanish 101 still. In some ways I liked it. I won't say it was rewarding necessarily... it was just rudimentary grammar. 101 students don't have a love for the language yet, and I'd say I was still so nervous about getting it all right with teaching, that I wasn't really in a place to inspire too much love for the language yet. I have one student I'm particularly happy with, who pulled off a B+ after trying really really hard. She wasn't one of those kids who walks in knowing 4 years of high school Spanish, thinking they're all that, so they coast and just get a B+ or A-. This girl really didn't know any Spanish whatsoever, struggled, and did it. That made me happy. There was this other kid, too, who blew me out of the water during the oral interview. The kid can't read or write in the language to save his life. But somehow he opens his mouth and out pours this perfect fluency. He is my opposite. I can read and write, but I can't speak well. I'll admit, frequently I just felt annoyed with students. I don't understand not getting an A in a 101 course. All it takes is attending class, completing the assignments, studying for a minimal amount of time. I don't see the difficulty. So when I'd have students sitting their looking mystified and miserable, I just wanted to shake them and shout, "Do the homework! Study your vocab list! Don't sit there thinking I can't I can't I can't because that takes all your damn energy!" I did have a temper in the classroom a few times. I'm sure that speaks to my discredit, but it's also part of who I am. When I get irritated, I don't always have a chance to hear my words in my head before I'm already hearing them out loud. Overall, I liked the majority of my students. I had mostly B's, several A's, a few C's, and only one D and one F. And I think I grade pretty fairly... I don't give points away. So they've done fairly well.

Well, and I got a tattoo in 2010. I know I wrote about that previously, but this is my year-end review. It's an Aum symbol with a cross touching water on the side that opens like a 3. I love my tattoo, and I'm glad to have it there on my skin, speaking for me. I think people get a little baffled with me, sometimes. People have come to me and said that this person or that person is confused about my spirituality... hello, why not ask me instead of tell someone else?... I can see where it would be confusing. A little girl brought up half Catholic and half Penecostal tears off one weekend from college to go to a convent. She thinks seriously about becoming a nun and goes on discernment retreats. She continues doing yoga and meditation, taking religious studies courses and suddenly leaves religion at the doorstep. I think people in my life take me as non-religious, which for some seems to be synonymous with non-spiritual. I was spiritual before I was religious. As a kid, I talked to God and even thought I heard his voice one morning after a particularly real nightmare, before anyone told me who or what God was. Religion was what came in the middle. I'm undecided whether I think Christianity is "right" or not, though I have to say my leaning is to the contrary. Nonetheless, the way I felt about Christ when I was into religion, really shaped who I am. I would weep as I carried the cross through stations at Lent. There was something about that willingness toward sacrifice, toward laying it all down for the sake of love. I understood that. Christianity, and Catholicism more specifically, touched the waters of my life and spirituality, so I have a small cross touching water on my back. There are three ripples- Father, Son, Holy Ghost.... mind, body, spirt... past, present, future... threes are important to me. I got the Aum, because to me that represents connection. Yoga was more important to me in my later years of high school, when I believe I had a special spiritual journey with my great grandmother and needed guidance through that from somewhere because there wasn't even a real way to ask for it from the people in my life. I don't believe they'd have known what it was I was trying to ask. I don't believe I was supposed to ask. I believe I knew what I was supposed to do and did it. But it was sort of private and so again, sort of secret, hard to take with me everywhere because it was so deep inside myself but so essential to my life in those times. It was strange to sit at Baristas with friends and... not talk about it. Now, to me, it represents a more embracing spirituality. To me, yoga is more for everyone. Anyone can walk in and experience their own divinity on their mat. And, I don't do yoga so much anymore mostly because I can't tolerate that quietude and aloneness for any extended period of time anymore (though I intend to try to get back to that over break) the symbol still signifies a spiritual connectedness to me, which for me is how I operate. I move on impulse sometimes, but only when that impulse comes from beyond. And I believe it does. I may not be in a convent, but I still live a life based on discernment. I want to know what I should do, not just for myself but for those I'm sharing this planet with. I feel souls sometimes, and this is my way of representing that and my overall spiritual journey, which to me is the single most important thing about my life to date... on my skin. I may not be good with words and discussing things with people sometimes, because I feel it gets me looked at a little weird, but I can have it on my skin.

2010 has been trying. It's been about changing and growing, persevering and thriving. I have my Meow, and he's an Excel wizard. He makes the coffee and pretends to be Donkey Kong. My grandma is constantly going, but for now I have her and the rest of my family and life is good. Thanks to ALL who have shared this year with me.