My roommates and I recently started a watch-through of all the Marvel movies – hitting about 2-3 a week – and last night we arrived at Iron Man 3 and I got a little choked up. Okay, so it wasn’t the actual movie that made me tear up, but what it represents to me and the time of my life I associate it with. Two weeks shy of seven years ago, I passed on going out for sushi with my very beloved youth group friends because my dad and I had tickets to go see Iron Man 3 Saturday of opening weekend.
Just a few months previous, in January of 2013, my dad had started his new job in North Dakota. It was a huge, life altering event that would change so much of my future and had completely disrupted my daily life. I knew nothing would ever go back to the way it had been before. I didn’t have a clue what my life would look like in three months, a year, two years. The future then scared me, so I chose not to think about it. Daily life in our house had taking a turn, most notable at dinner which had gone from a lively family ritual with both my parents, my brother, and I around the table to often just my mom and I sitting quietly next to one another. While I was painfully aware of the regular absence of my dad during the week (he commuted back each weekend), by first week of May I was finally settling into the “new normal.” Despite the uncertainty, I knew even then to make the most of what I could; so my dad and I had planned weeks, months even, ahead of time to see Iron Man 3 opening weekend. Marvel movies had become a point of bonding since I had fallen in obsession and introduced my dad to them. I did so on the premise I thought he would enjoy at least the first two Iron Man movies. I was correct and while we enjoyed all of the other characters in the Avengers lineup, Iron Man was our shared favorite. Iron Man 3 premiered in a time of my life that was ruled by denial and emotional numbness. I didn’t process the signs of anxiety and depression – my life was too privileged for me to possibly be anxious or depressed. I would write off my disinterest and lack of motivation as being a bad student. I would feel guilty about my work ethic, but couldn’t find the energy to do anything about it, which compounded to make me feel more guilty. Looking back, I can see that I was shutting down as a result of growing anxiety and depression. The disruption to daily life, uncertainty of the future, and looming anxiety and depression that surrounded my life when Iron Man 3 premiered all parallel my current situation in a way that made me a little emotional. Because even though it reminded me of a difficult time in my life, it also reminded me that I made it through. Things were exponentially different than they would have been, but I did eventually find my footing and set myself on a path that has brought me to so many amazing people and experiences. So while the current moment is hard, and there will absolutely be many more bad days before things get better, there will eventually be a better. Maybe not the same as before, but certainly better than now. PS: Dad, if you’re reading this: thank you for moving to North Dakota.
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Recently, I acted in a way that was selfish and impulsive, putting someone in an uncomfortable position that violated their trust, respect, and emotional space. It was incredibly wrong of me and I know it. I have apologized and the person has forgiven me, but the damage can’t be undone. There are consequences to my actions that I will have to live with. I am beyond disappointed in myself and it has really forced me to reflect.
Self-reflection is a difficult and on-going process. For me, it started with understanding why I responded the way I did, then recognizing that while my feelings were valid my actions were still wrong, and finally identifying what I need to work on and do better in the future. Why I did it: After the immediate regret, I spent two days utterly emotionally and physically shut down in disgust of my actions. I was appalled at the ugly side of myself that had surfaced and felt undeserving of anything good in my life. Eventually some of my rationality returned and I realized that there was nothing productive in wallowing in self-hatred, so I started my self-reflecting process. The place to start was understanding what motivated me to act the way I did. It came down to few key factors: an unstable mental state, being emotionally misled, and need for confrontation. These things factored together skewed my rationality, and when coupled with my natural impulsivity resulted in a poorly thought out decision. I demanded confrontation in an ill-conceived, impulsive manner. While confrontation in itself is not bad, the way I approached it was not okay. Why it wasn’t okay: I think it is important to explain at this point that I am NOT trying to excuse my actions. I take responsibility. At the end of the day, no matter the what the reasons, I made a poor choice that put someone else in a position that they did not deserve to be in. I put them in a situation they were not comfortable with. It was important for me to understand what caused me to act in a way that I struggled to reconcile with my own morals and beliefs, but even if there is an understandable motivation behind our actions, it doesn’t make them okay. Especially when those actions effect someone else. I acted upon by my impulsivity, which is both one of my best and worst traits. Here it falls in the category of worst. It was completely reckless of me to act so impulsively when it would have a direct impact on someone else. And that is really what it comes down to in terms of why my actions were wrong. Confrontation is okay, but not when it doesn’t respect a person’s trust and space. Confrontation can be good, but not when it is approached selfishly and insensitively. Doing better: At the end of the day, I know that I am not perfect. While I am irrationally forgiving of other people, I struggle to be even a little forgiving to myself. I have always tried to hold myself to a higher standard than I set for other people, but sometimes I hold that bar unreasonably high. And this is one of those times. It has taken a lot of bargaining to move beyond self-hatred and into a place of “learn and do better.” So here is the lesson I’ve learned: It is not okay to be impulsive when someone else is unwillingly involved in your actions. The biggest thing I am working on is checking myself before acting impulsively: What is driving me to act this way? Who else is involved? Is this a reasonable and rational reaction? Taking that time also allows me time to calm down from intense emotional moments where my judgement is easily skewed. Taking a time-out and thinking things out -- even just for a brief moment -- is something that will take time and practice on my part, but it is important in being better and has a lot of benefits for me and those I care about. More than anything I want to be the best person I possibly can be to those around me and treat everyone with respect and kindness. My actions recently didn’t reflect that ambition. It has been difficult grappling with myself in the fallout, and going through this process of understanding is just the beginning. It only means something if I follow through and DO better. I really thought 2019 had put me through the worst of it mentally, physically, and emotionally. Boy was I wrong. This year got off to a bit of a rocky start with a depression soaked week where I barely left my bed and hardly ate. But I came out of it once the new semester got underway and I had positive goals to put my energy towards. I had some new ideas for my 120 class to try out, I was excited for both of my grad classes, I was back doing work with my beloved Center for Writers, I set some running goals that I got a strong start on, I was eating more, finding time to be with friends, and overall felt I was moving in a positive direction. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but I was generally feeling good about life.
Y’all know what happened next, so I’ll just skip to how I’ve been. I would say it’s been a roller coaster, but I actually love those. No, it’s been more of a shitty traveling fair ride that feels like it about to fall apart at the seams and all the ride does is spin you in violent circles until you want to throw up. For now it seems like the ride is slowing down, but we are nowhere near getting off just yet. I’m going to break this one down into three sections: Mental, Physical, Emotional. Before I jump in, I have to recognize how lucky I am in this situation: I have roommates to keep me company, I am able to work from home (meaning I can stay home AND I still have a stable paycheck), and I have access to everything I need to make it through this troubling time. Mental: I’ll start with the most volatile one. My mental health has been all over the place these past weeks. Between the state of the world, family health issues, grad school, and personal life choices, my anxiety has been through the roof, nearly paralyzing at times. I have my ways of getting it under control, but not before it wreaks some level of havoc. At its best, my anxiety will make me jumpy and unfocused; at it’s worst, it will make me feel physically sick. Lately, it has been doing a lot of both of those along with everything in between. And of course, anxiety’s dear friend depression has decided to drop in on the party every now and then, dropping such helpful thoughts as “you aren’t worthy of any of the good things in your life” and “you can always just give up on everything you are working for” and “being dead is super way easier.” I know that none of these things are true and I have never believed them, but they are sometimes difficult of getting out of my head. Now more than ever I am thankful for the support network I have that is constantly there for me through even the worst of it. I am beyond grateful for those in my life who pick up on when something is off and immediately check in on me. At this point I would rate my mental health at a 4.85/10 Physical: Let’s go for a little pick-me-up. When the gym officially closed, I thought my running goals were done for. But by some miracle, the weather in Fargo has been holding at a reasonable place (wind chills above 20 and no snow)… for now. So outside runs have become part of my schedule. Unfortunately, the wind and rain do put a bit of a damper on the regularity of my runs, but when I am able to get out it feels good. For one thing, getting out of the house is crazy important for me because if I don’t leave, I barely get any movement in my day and I feel trapped. For another, the fresh air and sunshine do wonders for one’s overall health. Overall, I’ve been really happy with how this whole “running outdoors” thing has been going. And while the weather the last week and a half has been wildly unstable preventing me from getting in any good runs, I at the very least have gone on some good afternoon walks with my roommates. Additionally in my physical health, I have been eating a lot better: 1) no fast food 2) less snacking as there is no “snack as soon as I get home for the day” urge or snacking my way through a three hour grad class 3) roommates all home = more regular dinners together. I think confidently I could award myself a gold star in the physical health category. Emotional: I think I have felt every emotion under the sun at some point in the last month (I want to list off a bunch of emotions, but that’s a little too cliché even for me). I have also felt a lot of… nothing. When my mental health takes a dive, my emotional state tends to numb and I end up in an empty limbo. Thankfully, those moods haven’t been sticking around for too long and there have been a lot of good things to help me get me on the positive side of the emotional scale:
My state of being is definitely in flux, but in the end I am incredibly privileged in my position throughout all of this. I have no idea when we will finally be off this ride (and even then, we will be dealing with the repercussions), but I will do my best to cope until then. While right now is really sucky, over the last week a relentless sense of optimism has set in: on the other side of all this there are so many good things in store. They may seem far away at the moment, but I know I will get there so I am doing my best to make it through the now to eventually enjoy the good things waiting. I have always processed best through writing. And there has never been a point in my life where I’ve had more to process than now. Like every other person on the planet, my entirely life was recently thrown upside down, spun around, and released blind-folded into an obstacle course. And it happened in a matter of days. So I guess I’m going to blog now.
Where to start? I think I will start with the biggest part of my life right now: grad school. Just two weeks ago, I was a grad student stumbling (mostly successfully) through classes, doing a passable job teaching a First Year Writing class (ENGL 120), and searching for direction in my assistantship with the Center For Writers. I can’t say I was flying high, but at the very least I had my feet comfortably off the ground. But life sent a big storm and I crashed hard. Slowly I am picking myself, entirely disoriented and very bumped and bruised. My first mistake was trying to run without first checking that I could even stand on stable footing. I got myself a little desk for my bedroom with a decent office chair, made schedules and plans, gave myself an ambitious workload, and launched myself headfirst into my “new normal.” And I stumbled hard nearly immediately. Anyone who knows me knows my greatest flaw is my lack of time management. Moving to a life of online asynchronous classes, both as a teacher and student, is genuinely a waking nightmare for me. Having a set time and place to show up is what kept me accountable in getting work done. Flexible deadlines and ambiguous timelines have never been my friend, and now they are the entirety of my educational experience. Having failed to take off running, I find myself taking time to reassess. I think about how my normal week looked like: two long days, one mid length day, one short day, one flexible day (usually falling in the mid-to-short category), and 1-10 hours of work over the weekend depending on the work needed to be done. My first mistake was trying to balance out my work to an “even” amount of work each day, which does not work out for me as I do better with a varying work load from day-to-day. It will of course take a while to find the correct balance again, but there is little to do at this point but to trial and error. Slowly working out a workable, realistic schedule has just been the first step. The next is modifying everything to accommodate for a lack of in-person, synchronous conversation, both as a student and teacher. As a student, the two grad classes I am currently taking were originally designed to focus on student presentations and in-class discussion coupled with on-going individual assignments outside of class. While my professors are doing an incredibly commendable job at adapting their courses, I find it difficult to really explore the theory and connections of the courses without the regular in-class discussions that would bring the concepts to life in a way that is hard to replicate in blogs and discussion boards. Nonetheless, it is what it will be and I’ll have to make the most of it (though deep down I can’t help but feel short-changed in this semester of my grad school experience). As a teacher, I have spent a good deal of time reworking my class. I have to completely revise the final three projects for the course (one down, two to go), adapt my schedule, find the best way to give students access to content, and still make the course meaningful. I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the bombardment of emails full of “helpful” information and links and tools to assist in online teaching flooding my inbox everyday over the last 2+ weeks. I quickly learned to ignore all of them and work with what I know best. It will be far from perfect, but I am doing what I can. More than anything, I am trying to keep in mind that my students are all stuck in different situations. I am keeping my course as simple as possible, allowing for flexibility while also providing enough structure to be conducive to learning. It has yet to be seen how successful my plans will be as we are still in the early stages of this new environment. No doubt there will be some misses, and I will have to recalibrate on the go as things unfold. Ultimately, it seems I have finally gotten myself into a standing position that is stable enough to start moving forward. For now, my focus will be putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, I hope to work up to a strong power walk, maybe even a slow jog! And while I tend to set high expectations for myself, just getting through this might have to be enough for now. To end on a lighter note, it seems that in the next few months I will finally be forced to overcome my abhorrence for communicating via email and come out of all of this with a mastery of the offending means of communication! I did a research project last year about how classrooms could be more inclusive to introverts, and in doing so it could be beneficial to extroverts as well. A lot of classes moving towards 21st century skills have left introverts in the dust as the US has moved to value extroverted qualities. After I presented my project, someone in the class brought up the point that if the current cultural standard in the US, wouldn't students want to work towards extroversion? I have thought about that a lot since, always ends with me being upset with the trend of over-valuing extroversion. Before getting to my actual point, I will fill you in on what exactly what was included in my project. The first step of my research involved defining introvert and extrovert. In my research, I found an article by Emma Lowry titled "Silence is Golden- The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture." Lowry explained that introverts “thrive in environments that are not over-stimulating,” “tend to enjoy quiet concentration,” and spend more time listening than speaking while extroverts “are energized by social situations and tend to be assertive multi-taskers who think out loud” I would just like to include a quick disclaimer here: I am aware that introversion and extroversion exist on a spectrum rather than in two defined groups (I am an ambivert myself), but for the sake of my paper, I focused on the traits most associated with the far ends of the spectrum. Once I had my working definition of introvert and extrovert, I set to work on looking at the educational aspect. Many of today's classrooms rely on cooperative and communication-based learning. These are great learning techniques and are hugely beneficial to extroverted students, but an over-reliance on these techniques can create a negative learning experience for introverted students where they feel exhausted and inadequate. The bulk of my research paper details alternative teaching methods that are more inclusive to introverted students. These methods included things like solitude/silent work time, online discussion, think-pair-share, questioner/respondent schedules for discussions, flipped/inverted classrooms, and structured small groups. One of the things that really stood out to me in my research is that the methods I was reading about not only include introverts, but can be beneficial to extroverted students as well. Because extroverts tend to respond to questions and problems with the first thing that comes to mind, they have a tendency to not fully develop their responses. Many of the strategies I discuss in my paper involve an element of quiet thinking or self-reflection. This gives introverts the time they need to work through the answer or solution and compels extroverted students to create more developed responses. A win-win situation really. As a future teacher, I plan do my part in teaching the importance of skills from both end of the spectrum, and hope that when my students are the generation in charge they will implement the values I taught them. However, I would like to see the change happen a little sooner than that, which would require a group effort. I propose that we bridge the gap and learn to appreciate skills from across the spectrum. We live in a world of constant communication where it comes in handy to be able talk to people every day. What troubles me is how easy it is to appreciate extrovert skills because they are surface level, but valuable introvert skills are neglected because they are more internal. When it comes down to it, there are two different approaches to bridging this inequality: a change in mentality or a change in process. The first approach would be to put greater societal value on introverted traits and see their benefits in the professional world, viewing introvert qualities as equally employable skills to extrovert qualities. This would be a more separate-but-equal take on the issue, which can present problems of its own as it is hard to enforce. The second approach is that if introverts are expected to learn social skills to be successful in the current job market, extroverts should be expected to learn independent critical thinking skills. This would lead to less stigmatism of both ends of the spectrum while creating a greater understanding among people of different personality types and is the kind of approach I plan to take as a teacher. I present a lot of big dreams and ideas, but I do not believe they are entirely unattainable. It is far from an overnight change and will take a lot of work on the behalf of individuals. It is hard to change everyone's mind and it is hard to change the whole system, but society could greatly benefit from a little more understanding and inclusion when it comes to introversion and extroversion. I believe it can be done, it just takes a place to start, someone to open their mind to the possibilities and share with those around them. It can start with you. |
AuthorMy name is Vanessa and I decided actually utilize this blog site I made for an undergrad writing class assignment and only posted on once. I hate the name of this blog (I thought I was really clever and subtly subversive in 2017), but I'm not going to change it because my moral code is to stick to the stupid shticks that I come up with. Archives |