photo by me.

I don't know what I expected teaching would be like, but certainly not this. I did not expect qualms after every class and a thousand questions I don't know the answer to (what do I do about someone I think is dyslexic? what if someone confides in me, do I take it further? and the ones that are lagging behind? or way, way ahead, and bore out of their minds?), though I did expect hormones and some resistance and lots of good things. Unsure of how much I can or should disclose of my reflections regarding this new little job of mine, I suppose I'll keep it to a minimum, unless it's very general. But this will help me, I think, when looking back, because I will know better what I felt then and what I've learnt now. Or perhaps what I will have forgotten in one month, two months.

Neither did I expect to be so tired after one day. To feel like I failed and failed and succeeded a little bit, but that I'm at the mercy of thirty students and also at their service. It is for them that I am there, after all (which feels weird and pretentious, but they are my employers).

At the same time I try to work and to make some things, and even to write a little bit. Just a page or two, something that isn't a student report or description of the essay-genre. Not long. And I'm beading and beading, but I don't know what's happening with that. Now that I'm no longer in school there is not much point to me making things but then at the same time there is ALL the point that I make these things. Nobody's telling me it's right or wrong, and that's weird and unusual. No censoring? No silence muddling discomfort and boredom in an airless critique? No awkward animal stuffed with acrylic paint on a pedestal? Strange freedom is also bizarre entrapment.