Yesterday I was trying to get a jump on my spring semester lecture prep. I am teaching a class that overlaps substantially but not entirely with the grad class I taught in the spring, and so I went through all of my spring slides in sequence to pull out the ones I can use this time around.
This was the class, you might remember, into which I poured uncountable hours only to learn in June that a majority of the students had hated it. They were so nasty in their assessments of the class that I had started to think it must have been a really terrible class after all. But yesterday I sat in my office and looked at file after file of carefully prepared information-- information about theory and practice and language and behavior that took me years to learn, served up with all the clarity and creativity and wit that I could muster. I told my husband this morning, "It's like I blenderized a chunk of my heart for them, and dispersed it across the semester."
Sometimes you do the very best you can for people, and they are jerks about it. I know that's a true statement. Doesn't mean I have to like it.
There's a beautiful prayer in St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians: he prays "that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you." It's an idea I keep coming back to, that my inner vision is more important than what I see with my actual eyes. That I can hold on to hope in all circumstances. On bad days my inner vision is nothing so lofty. On bad days it's more like laser eyes of the heart in there: zappity-zap, mean student with distinctive handwriting who said patently false things about me under cover of anonymity! Zappity-zap, rude drivers and judgy acquaintances and also that person ambling through the crosswalk while attempting to send a text! Dear Jamie: You are the only person who gets zapped by those laser eyes.
This week I will try again to teach this material that I love so much to a different cohort of grad students. It will probably be fine; the fall class was fine. One of my new year's resolutions is to aim to be a Good Enough Prof: to lay down perfectionism and anxiety, to keep my eyes on the bigger picture. I suppose I should also try to keep my inner laser in check.
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