So Many Firsts...

 I turned 54 years old this year, and I am still doing and experiencing new things. This should not be surprising, as my parents have led the way in doing new things in the past 20 years, including becoming involved in prison ministry, and many other things that are not my stories to tell.

But this year it has felt like the changes are dogpiling me, and it's going to get even more intense. I can't even get into all of it, but here are a few:

1. New learning management system (LMS). I've been on Google Classroom since Covid hit, with a little experience using Canvas many years before that. I was really leaning into GClass, but my university decided to drop it. So this semester I've been reacquainting myself with Canvas. It's certainly not a major change, but it does mean reconstructing a lot of tools that I had built for GClass.

2. For the past three weeks I have been experimenting with "flipping" my classroom. This will not require an extra-large spatula, or trampolines, and have not been using my middle fingers any more than usual. Instead, I am recording lectures that explain what I want students to do. They watch it as part of their homework, then do some writing to prepare for class. When they come to class, we can almost immediately start conversation exercises. My previous student talking time over two 50-minute periods per week was about 45%. This way I can push it up to around 90%. It's huge, but the prep on the video lecture is a bit rough. This is a fairly big change in mindset for me, and since I'm doing it mid-semester it's a big change for my students. Some of them hopped right on board this train, but some have dug in their heels. I may very well pay a penalty in poor student evaluations at the end of the semester for this move. Stress.

3. Last year I submitted a proposal for a new course which did not get approved. I am revamping it, and trying to make a course that will be acceptable. It's exciting, but it also falls into that "planning ahead" category which vexes me so easily. On it's own, not a big deal. Throw in a weird mental block on my part, and it is a struggle for me to not just give up on the idea and shred it to make confetti to throw at my pity party.

4. I did not max out my overtime this semester, but I'm one class short of doing so. I'm teaching nine classes with a total of about 190 students. For me that is a lot of people to deal with. Not a deal breaker on its own, but with everything else in my life this year, it's a handful of grit in the oil, just keeping track of all of those students and their assignments and their attendance and their excuses for not attending. At heart, teaching is an act of will, and even with cooperative partners, the more people you are teaching, the more willpower is required. And not all of my students are cooperating.

5. I have Mondays off from Kyungsung Universities. In the past, I've used my day off to catch up, plan, sometimes just chill out. But this year I am filling in as English teacher at the Waldorf school from which Maxine graduated and where Quinten is still attending. I teach four classes, 7th through 12th grades. The classes are not huge: the 9th and 10th grades together are my largest class at 15 students. Eleventh and 12th grades have a total of 10 students. Eighth grade has (I think) 10 and 7th grade has eight. So about 42 more students. They are fairly high energy, low ability, but also low fear and better able to focus than many of my university students, for Waldorf reasons.

6. I teach a small group of Waldorf school parents one evening a week, and attend band rehearsal on another. These insure that I am not getting enough sleep early in the week, so that I get to dose up on caffeine via my go-to beverage, the iced Americano. Which feels like it could be my nickname by the end of this year. We spend an hour working on their English, then they spend an hour working on my Korean, and it has made a huge difference for me! My Korean language skills have improved a lot in the past couple of years. 

No. That's not quite correct. I have improved my Korean a lot over the last couple of years. Which leads me to a new experience stemming from points five and six above:

Today was Teachers' Day in Korea, which is kind of a big deal. It's a government holiday, so I stayed home most of the day to get some work done. I could not attend the festivities at the Waldorf School to celebrate yesterday, but there was a local library fundraiser this evening at which I received a few cards. This year I received four cards, one each from a parent of one of the classes I teach. One was a beautiful, water-colored piece of cardstock with meticulous Korean writing on it. No envelope, so I noticed it right away and tried to read it.

Usually I breeze past messages in Korean that are longer than a sentence or two, but this one was directed at me, by a mother who I know, about her daughter, who has been doing very well in my class. I couldn't understand all of it, but I found that I was past a threshold that I did not previously realize existed: I could understand enough of the letter to get feelings from it. She told me that her daughter had been worried about having class with me and fitting in with the other kids (she went to a different school for a couple of years and just returned). The mother told me a little about what her daughter was doing in my class, which was very interesting to read, like hearing your own voice echo back out of a cave reshaped such that it might have been someone else calling out, but still recognizably my own.

I found myself moved to tears. It made me so happy that the student felt cared for, and that she shared it with her mother, who shared it with me. On top of all that, I was reading and understanding it in Korean!

As I said, it's been a stressful year, and it's only May. This letter was so refreshing, a reminder that what I do makes a difference. It's not always easy to see when you're in the trenches, so it's good to have a direct reminder from time to time. And it's the first time that I've ever been moved like this by a text written in Korean! So I am kind of proud of myself for that as well!

And now it is after 1 a.m., guaranteeing that I will not be quite at my best tomorrow. But I got this story written out before sleeping on it, topping off the whole experience with another little sense of accomplishment.

I'm not Myself Today... Or Ever

This post originated as a discussion between me and Aubrey about being married and single, and how married people often forget what it was like to be single. It also originated in December. I started writing it, saved the draft, then got caught up in other things.

I know that I have a tendency to become separated from my past. I often feel that I have always been with Horyon, and the time before her was something else; perhaps a dream, maybe a book I read. The same with Maxine. We were married for four and a half years before she was born, but now it's kind of hard for me to remember what it was like, being married and without children.

I think everyone tends to live in the present like this to some extent. Another example: when I was living in Nepal, it took no time at all for my American life to seem more like a story I had read than an actual experience. Vice versa when I left Nepal. I went back to visit Nepal five years after leaving, and found that I couldn't just go back to what I was before. Partly because I could no longer speak the language as well. Partly because I no longer had my "Nepal Reflexes". And mostly (if not entirely) because I was no longer the person I had been.

Getting married is similar to moving to another country, even in the language department. One adds new phrases, like "my wife" and "since I got married". The first few times you say them, they feel almost like a foreign language in your mouth. (How embarrassing is it to say, "I met my girlfriend yesterday," when everyone knows that you're married?) And like learning a foreign language, the next bits you learn seem easier, like "my daughter" and "our family".

Some of the other transitions were also difficult to adjust to: I had always jealously guarded my privacy, and being married means not being alone as much. That is mostly a good thing, but sometimes difficult. I still love to have time alone, I just don't get nearly as much of it. The first time I walked into the bathroom and almost fell on my butt because the floor was wet, even though I had not taken a shower since the previous day, it hit home for me: "I" am now "we".

Sharing stuff wasn't such a big deal for me. Once Horyon realized that putting a CD in the wrong jewel box was an executable offense, things went pretty smoothly. But I know that for some people merging stuff is a big transition, along with merging finances. Neither has caused us any problems, but it's still an adjustment: it was "my stuff", now it's "our stuff".

The changes, big and small, are along the same scale as moving to a foreign country. And the memory of the time before those changes can also be slippery to hold on to. We lose details over time, making our mental picture somewhat blurry. In addition to being blurry, the picture may be inaccurate for other reasons: it's easy to romanticize your single days, glossing over the loneliness and pain, remembering only the good bits. And it's just as easy to focus on the bad days, forgetting that there were some damn good times back then.

It can all be quite confusing, and sometimes leads to not trusting one's own gray matter. When I met Horyon, I quickly became aware of the void in my life that she filled so perfectly. I told her many times, without exaggeration, that she made my whole life better. My best times before meeting her seemed, in retrospect, kind of pitiful. But now I can remember that there were times when I really was happy, even with a steady undercurrent of loneliness. Being with friends chased the loneliness back into a dark corner for the evening, and I wasn't like one of those stupid pictures of a crying clown. I was actually happy! Or was I? The memories of happy times now seem somewhat suspect. I was so sure that those good old days weren't really that good; why do they appear so attractive when I think about them after weeks of insufficient sleep?

It suggests that the only feelings you can be really (if not absolutely) sure of are the ones you are experiencing right now.

In one of the Harry Potter books, Dumbledore says to Harry, "Harry, I owe you an explanation. An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young...and I seem to have forgotten lately."

I had to go look that up. Found it at MuggleNet. I didn't remember the exact words, but the idea rang clear and true to me when I read the book, and came back to mind as I was writing this. I would like to think that I can still be sympathetic with people who are going through what I have long ago finished, or never even started. But I know that I have that universal tendency to superimpose myself on everyone around me.

And for the record, one thing I love about the Harry Potter books is that the central, larger-than-life, super hero/role model character of Dumbledore, with all of his fans and wisdom, still has his failings. He is very human.

And if that is not enough wandering for you in one post, you will just have to read more than one post and pretend it was just one.