Final Thoughts

I have enjoyed learning about the emotional intelligences, and I think I would like to spend some more time studying them and learning to hone each one to make me a better person and a better teacher. I think blogging is a good way to delve into things like this, even if you just make it private and never share with anyone else. The therapeutic benefits of writing are actually quite amazing. I have a Live Journal I've used in the past (check it out Lmspence.livejournal.com), and I actually have some ideas for other blogs to write (I would love to write a food/restaurant blog!). What a great invention! I may continue to use this one as well. I don't think you can ever have too many blogs.

Give me an A!

I’m pretty much a type-A person – at least when it comes to work and school related tasks. I can actually be quite laid back during my free time or relaxation time. But when it comes to tasks that I must complete, I am high-stress, highly-detailed, and highly-motivated. Being type-A can be quite an asset at times – my supervisor has lauded me repeatedly for my attention to detail and my information retention. These skills help me all the time in the working world and I know they will help me when I am a teacher as well. However, being type-A can be a liability for me as well – I get really stressed out and it can affect me in very negative ways. I get crabby, I get sick, I have a hard time focusing. Stress can help me hone in on important details, but it can also drive me crazy. I tend to be a stressed person, and it’s very frustrating and exhausting. Thankfully, though, I tend to get over things quickly. I’m a very verbal person, and if I can just talk it out or vent to someone about the thing that is stressing me, then I can get over it. I’m really only stressed in the moment – but a lot of these moments can build up to just wear me out. Incidentally, my interpersonal relationships can be both the cure for and source of a lot of my stress. Because I am an extrovert, I am powered up by other people – and I find solace in others’ company and advice. I like bouncing ideas off of other people, and I just like talking it all out. But I also get worn down worrying about what other people think and stressing about their opinions of me. That is the bad part about being an extrovert. I would say a large part of the stress in my life is worrying about other people. I do it to myself. I need to let go and just trust that other people can figure things out themselves, and I need to remember that not everyone will get me and not everyone will like me. As I get older, I am getting much better at this, but it is still a daily struggle. I really love being a people person and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, I just need to find a way to balance that with taking care of myself too.

Regarding myself

I have a weird relationship with myself. One day I think I’m just super awesome, kick-butt, amazing, and that I deserve all the best in life. The next day I’m certain that no one likes me, I’m terrible, and I’ll never do anything right. I guess we all have our up days and our down days, but I think I get like this because I just can’t seem to figure myself out. I’m not always sure what I want, and I’m not always sure I’m doing the right things to get what I want. This is never clearer when I think about what I want in a potential partner and how to go about getting into the dating world. I know you were in class that day I was talking with Brandyn and Trent about online dating and how they met their wives. I’ve been seriously considering online dating for awhile now (PS this post has nothing to do with teaching, obviously). My two best friends have been encouraging me to do this. They’ve even gone so far as to offer to buy me a month’s subscription to Match.com or some such website, as a Christmas present, to encourage me to do this. So this has been a topic of discussion. At one point, I was talking about how I was worried I would never find someone who was good enough for me, who would get me, who would be able to put up with how strange I am (and appreciate my weirdness). Then another day I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t really deserve anybody and there was no one I was good enough for. My friend Monica threw up her hands and exasperatedly sighed, “Make up your mind, woman! One day there’s no one good enough for you and the next day you are awful and no one will want you!” She was bringing up a key point about me and my own self-regard: I just can’t seem to make up my mind about myself, and my confidence wavers from super over self-confidence to complete self-deprecation. I can’t seem to find a happy medium. I think this is because for a good portion of my life, my self-esteem was for shit, and as I’m getting older I’m finally feeling more confident in myself and coming to appreciate all the quirky awesome things that make me who I am – but sometimes I just revert back to that silly little girl who had no self-confidence. I’m working on it, and I think that at my core, I do regard myself highly – it’s just easy to slip back into that low self-confidence.

Actually?

Well, obviously, the hard part about all of this is actualizing all of it – becoming what you want to be and being your best. I have certain core values that guide me in my life, most specifically empathy, altruism, doing the right thing, being non-judgmental and open-minded, and honing my intelligence to help other people. These values are pretty much why I’ve decided to become a teacher – I always saw myself doing something that serves other people and helps others to reach their best self. I’m a fairly intelligent person – I’ve always been self-motivated, I always liked school, I care about things, and try to make sure I understand all sides of various topics and viewpoints. I feel like I was given this intelligence for a reason. I feel like I’m meant to use it to help other people and make some kind of difference in this crazy world. But the question is and has always been: what the heck am I supposed to do to achieve this? What career choice or goal will allow me to help people, make a difference, and use my intelligence in a constructive important way? I considered law school for awhile – some kind of law that helps people and that would cause me to be drastically poor but incredibly happy. I considered something to do with politics. I considered going into the non-profit field (incidentally, my first job after college was a non-profit company that helped people gather information on their elected officials to make an informed vote (http://www.votesmart.org). Finally, after a couple of years of just working at some normal, terrible corporate job, I realized the right place for me would be education. I want to parlay my passion for English literature (and the topics and discussions that literature can bring about) into something that helps kids to find their own passions and find their own way to give a damn about something. I want to help kids see that they don’t have to just work for money – they can expect more of their lives and more of themselves. This is what would really allow me to feel like I made some kind of difference to somebody, and know that I helped someone in my life. Self-actualization for me is the day when I realize I’ve done that and the day that all of these crazy mixed up things in my head make sense and come to fruition in the form of at least one student who has their own “A HA” moment. Maybe then I will know I “actually” succeeded at my goals.

Did I Do the Right Thing?

This is a question that I ask myself all of the time. I constantly worry if I did the right thing in various situations, and I always try to do the socially responsible thing when it comes to most of my actions. I value fairness, ethics, and morals, but I also see the gray area when it comes to a lot of things. It’s important to me to be a good person and to do things that benefit society. This is probably one of the driving factors of why I’ve decided to become a teacher, and it constantly guides my decisions.

But I do find myself in situations where I’m just not sure if I did the right thing or not, and it’s hard to know when to do the right thing, especially if it means putting yourself in danger. I also think it’s sad when other people don’t hold themselves to the same standards – when they blatanly just don’t give a shit about others and just do what they want without thought about hurting someone else. Here’s a recent situation that happened that just made me really sad: I was grabbing some lunch at Jack In the Box after my internship (I have to go to my paying job afterwards so I try to grab lunch and there happens to be a Jack in the Box close to the school). I was sitting at a table eating when a guy walked in with a cup and went over to the soda fountain to fill it up. I noticed that the cup was a Big Grab cup (like you get at whatever gas station it is). I was curious to see if he was going to pay for it, I thought maybe, just maybe he was trying to be “green” and just reuse a cup he already had. Nope. He filled up the cup and quickly ran out before the employee at the counter had a chance to do anything. I was the only person in the store, and the employee had been watching him too – he said something to the soda thief, but the guy just ignored him and hurried out. The employee went after him, but he got in a car and drove off, over to a gas station nearby! The employee walked over there, but he didn’t catch the guy. It was just so rude… if you are really thirsty, just ask, some places will just let you do an IOU or will be more understanding. I felt so bad for the Jack in the Box employee. As I was leaving the restaurant, I saw the thief drive by again in his car (he had picked up a friend who was hanging out in the parking lot), and he pulled out into the street, going the same direction as me. I tried to get up behind him and get his license plate number, with the thought that I would call the Jack In The Box and provide them with the info, but I couldn’t get up behind him because he was speeding (of course) and it wasn’t worth getting into an accident over. But at least I tried.

Did I do the right thing here? I think I did. I wish I could have been more helpful, but sometimes the risk isn’t worth it. I could have tried to chase him and get his information, but I just don’t think getting in an accident over it would have been a good thing. And I figure, people like that, with such blatant disregard for others, it will catch up to them. The next time he tries to steal something, even something small like soda, it might not go so easily. I just don’t understand how someone can give so little respect to other people. I know it was just soda, but the idea behind what he did is just do disheartening. And unfortunately, I think there are a lot of people out there that do things like this all the time, and a lot worse things. If people could just see how their actions affected others, this world would be such a better place. If that guy had taken 5 seconds to think about the effects of his actions, he would have seen how stealing even that 50 cents of soda caused repercussions for the people that work there. But a lot of people don’t think that way. It’s so disheartening.

Flexible or Faking It

I'd like to think that I'm a fairly flexible person. I am open-minded and open to trying different options and different ways of thinking about a problem. I think I'm especially flexible when it's something that I have never done before, or that I don't know as much about – I would prefer to defer to the experts, if you will, and take the advice of someone who has experience with the matter. For example, in my internship with my mentor teacher, I have been tasked with teaching a grammar unit to his Freshman English Essentials students (as I have mentioned before). He has left this pretty open for me to teach the unit as I choose but since this is all so new to me (planning and implementing a unit), I am very open to his suggestions for the unit, and flexible in how I plan and actually teach the unit. Last week, I went in, all set to go over this review worksheet that I had given them (sort of an open book test). I was going to have them just work on it with partners and we would discuss the more difficult questions as a class. But when I got in there, I could tell they would need something more interactive – so instead I split them into partners, assigned them each 2 sentences to work on together, and report back to the class about it. This ended up working out so much better, as we were able to discuss all of it as a class, I was able to see where everyone was at in their understanding, and it was just generally a more enjoyable lesson for everyone. This really showed me that sometimes I need to just be flexible with my plans for a lesson and see how the students are interacting that day, and sometimes just adjust my plans to fit that better.

However, when it comes to something I am fairly comfortable with, and have found my set way of doing, I can be less flexible. I'll change my ways, but with a bit of kicking and screaming along the way. This is evidenced at my day job – a Client Services Representative for Universal Background Screening. I have worked at this company for two and a half years, and in that time have found my specific way of handling issues that I come across on a daily basis – issues I have now become comfortable with since I've been doing it for so long. So when I'm asked to handle something differently, or give away a task that I normally do, it is somewhat difficult for me to be as flexible as I should be. I do it, but not happily. Thankfully, I'm pretty good at faking it, and most of the time, I am able to get used to the new way quickly and find the benefits of doing the task this other way. I just need to force myself to feel that way the first time I am asked to try a different way.