It’s been a long week. Challenging, terrifying, satisfying. I think that’s the key point here: it’s been satisfying. I don’t wake up and think how I might just crack if I have to actually do what it is I’m doing day after day: I can’t wait to get up in the morning. The food is delicious (though this place could well be a vegetarian’s nightmare), the city is beautiful, and the people are warm. There is also a sense of community, a sense of shared experience and fellowship that is almost unimaginable in the US. And, as is always the case when life takes you far from home, the mundane tasks I hated at home have become adventures, learning experiences. I find going to the grocery store here an absolutely fascinating task. I’m sure it won’t always be that way, but I’m more than happy to enjoy it while it is. School is hard, and sometimes I’m dying to get home and lie down, but I’m learning so many things that I find both useful and interesting, things that I can imagine being relevant to my life beyond the end of the course. All in all, I feel generally positive about the challenges and novelties of being here in Poland. No surprise.
But, oh, the students. I am surprised by them constantly. My students are the absolute joy of my days. I can’t get over how quickly most of them have crawled under my skin, straight to that warm, fuzzy place I always used to hide deep down inside. In fact, if I didn’t like my students so much, I think this course might be easier. I could just stick straight to the syllabus and crank out a textbook lesson, I could be firmer with them when I’m giving instructions; I could give them easy work to make myself look good. But I do like them. I want them to have fun while they’re learning, I want them to like me, and I want them to know I see their potential and expect them to live up to it. That makes the lesson planning so much more difficult. I admit to having a few favorites, because no matter how hard you try to be even-handed, it’s impossible to bypass basic rules of human nature, and some people are just easier to get. But what’s so cool about teaching is that just when you think you’ve zeroed in on the people you really like, one of your other students steps in and does or says something to make you see a side of them you didn’t suspect, and that you love just as much, or more.. God, maybe teaching is just making me soft, because lately I find myself back in that place where I accept the inherent good in other people. I see the negatives as quirks, and the positives as their true natures, instead of the other way around. Maybe I’m just a marshmallow, really, and I was never as tough as I thought I was.
What else is different now that I get to re-create myself in a new place? Well, for one thing, I’ve been really trying. Before I left home, I had been noticing among more and more people around me the pervasive idea that as you get older, it’s no longer ok to be so enthusiastic about life, because that’s not cool. As you become “wiser,” you should know that some things are just never going to happen, so you should accept your lot and move on with the business of growing up. Well, maybe. But some things are never going to happen because we stop trying hard enough. We become so averse to the possibility of failure that we quit really putting all of our heart into them, we do them halfway so that it won't hurt so badly, or so that we have that excuse to fall back on when things don’t work out they way we wanted them to. It's not really because they can't happen. Sure, they may never happen exactly the way we thought they would when we were 5 years old, but as far as I'm concerned, dreams really aren’t that fragile. I don’t think they shatter into a million pieces if we aren’t careful with them. I think they’re flexible and resilient and can be molded into as many different shapes as we have ideas to apply to them. I think we can make new dreams out of old dreams, even late in life. And since most of my friends are only in their upper 20s and lower 30s, the idea that we've got to give up trying is even more absurd. I think that the most un-cool things I can actually think of are apathy and resignation. And I'm glad that I snapped out of them when I did, because I was getting awfully tired of being so un-cool all the time.
Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed my little game of “What Rachel thinks.” If you want more, don’t worry. We’ll play again after I’ve finished the paper I’m putting off right now. Suggested topics can be posted in the comments or emailed to rainydaygirl414@gmail.com. Until next time, Do Widzenia!
No comments:
Post a Comment