I read this in a student paper today. It touched a very sensitive chord in my heart.
Confession: I have been teaching for eleven years. When I chose to continue teaching instead of going on to get my PhD, I was told that I was making a mistake. If I wanted to get anywhere, I would have to have my doctorate. All I wanted to do was teach.
Then my health progressively deteriorated. I ran out of money. I ran out of energy. I almost ran out of caring. For a great while, I have been trying to pull myself out of a deep well of teaching depression. Luckily, my personal life was practically idyllic, other than not being married, and the care I was receiving from doctors so personalized that I was able to survive. If it had been otherwise, I think I would have stayed in that dark place indefinitely. I was beating myself up to be the best teacher I could and I wasn't getting paid enough to live. I had to take on three jobs sometimes just to make ends meet. I had three semesters of some really tough students and some dire health problems. I began to hate teaching school. I was stuck in a viscous scarcity cycle of financial and physical trauma. I decided to leave teaching and enter the corporate world.
But I couldn't find a job.
I was severely underemployed, but I kept teaching because I didn't want to leave the only income I had. It was really hard. When I started teaching I was so bright eyed and bushy tailed. My mentor warned me I would burn out, become cynical. Guess what, I did. I went from being so open-hearted, to feeling like I had to protect myself constantly from the germs, the stress, the criticism, the lack of support.
Then last year in January my best friend called. She had recently moved back to Arizona to be with her kids after graduating with an illustration degree. Things were not going well. She couldn't find a job. She was deeply depressed. I sat in my car and watched the clouds lowering over Utah Lake, and listened to her talk it out. Then she said that we should go to a writing conference. I had not told her about my own financial stress or about my current health situation. Before I could tell her no, I said, "Okay. I don't know how, but okay." We both cried and made each other promises that we would help each other to make GOOD ART no matter what, and that when we made a million dollars we would take good care of each other. You know, all the promises you make to your best friend.
And things began to change.
What would ensue was another really horrific year of financial and physical trauma. And yet. My attitude had changed. I had something to look forward to. I had something to write about. I started sharing my ideas with my students. I opened up about how I felt and why things were hard. I felt my heart opening. I started working with my doctor on changing some pretty ingrained ideas about myself and what my life had to be like. I started to let things go. I approached teaching in a different way. I set more firm boundaries and then went with the flow.
Circumstances had not changed. I was the one who changed.
I worked on healing some really important relationships: pouring love and sunshine on the people in my life, trying to show gratitude, and gracefully receiving help when it was offered. I looked for the good in my students and realized that it had always been there. I forgave. The people in my life didn't change; I did. I got closer to my friends. I made lots of therapeutic phone calls where I actually talked about how I honestly felt. My friends didn't walk away; they stayed. I got closer to my family. I made lots of calls and wrote lots of cards I gave what I could and stopped feeling so bad about what I couldn't do.
At the beginning of this semester, January, one of my students approached me after class. She had been my student the previous semester and was taking me for English 2010. She said that she just wanted to thank me for helping her have such a good experience. She said that I was the first teacher in her life who actually showed that I cared about her. Knowing that I was working just as hard a she was to make the class successful changed things for her. In my heart, I saw how much I had changed from the bitter, sick, and tired person I was two years ago. It wasn't like I was a bad teacher, but I had closed myself off from them. All the warmth and love was gone because I just couldn't feel it anymore. Here I was in almost the same circumstances, and I was so different. And yet I wasn't. I was back to who I was before the trauma. My best friend is my best friend because she was my student and I was a loving caring person and we took a chance on each other.
As I sit here blogging and grading today, I realize that we may not be able to control our circumstances, but we can control our response. I knew this truth. I supposedly lived this truth. But when I read my student's comment about how much love she feels in my class in just the first few weeks of the semester, I realize that I have changed my response. Is it hard to do? Oh yes. Is it worth is.
Oh yes.
Keep choosing happiness my peeps.