Story of My Life
Dr. Louise Banks, in Arrival: "If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?"
--------------------------
It has been a semester, and the evidence that I've done a shitton of good work is everywhere.
I have filled notebooks with Geometry notes. I have a Google Drive full of papers for my graduate classes. My colleague and I have mapped a scope and sequence of 63 major concept groups in STEM for the creation of our new STEM Project cohort (which we have yet to name but that we're told must have a flashy name soon). I have survived a semester of teaching at the University, and while I can safely say it is against my grain, I have grown from the experience. I run a state chess affiliate with moderate success, and I'm playing better chess. I live in a dormitory with fantastic kids on a campus where I have much to be grateful for.
I have a healthy happy daughter, and (hopefully) a healthy happy spouse.
People I admire and look up to, people I work closely with, people I love, have told me they care about me, they're proud of me, they're grateful for me.
There is much to be happy about.
-------------------------
And, yet, I found myself watching the end of the movie Arrival on Saturday night, a movie about the frailty and beauty and flexibility of language and time, pondering this very question. Would I change things if I could see the whole domain of my life, from start to finish, in its entirety, knowing that I could defy the paradoxes so typical of these thought experiments (self-fulfilling prophecies and bootstrap loops and alternate universes)? Were there parts of my life I would erase at the expense of others? Would I live what I was set out to live if given the choice?
It is moments like these that I am tempted to say yes, I would change things. I know that this thought experiment is silly at its core. If the thought experiment truly suggests fatalism, then the instant different choices are made the timeline would simply be another version I'm fated to, and the question is repeated. What's the point? The experiment should reach a loop and the answer of 'yes' or 'no' returns to free will: if yes, then live in the moment and start changing your life; if no, then why worry?
It's hard to battle the idea that I've wasted my life, that I somehow could have done better things with my time and with my energy. That I could have made better choices in spite of the lessons those poor decisions have afforded me (and there have been so, so many). That somehow, being where I am, there's a potential that has gone unrealized and untapped. It is a nagging feeling, albeit an irrational one, and at every turn of introspection I encounter I grapple with this feeling, without fail.
-------------------------
Before Thanksgiving break, I had to defend my entire educational philosophy. One of my department chairs laid out a full vision of how I was viewed: that I was a "Montessori" guy* who was hands off, didn't believe in grades, didn't believe in structure, wasn't "with" the traditional way of "doing school" and so it wasn't clear whether I was "for" or "against" my school in general. I was furious. I felt so enraged to have to stake out my actual ground on terms that felt less like altruism and more like survival. I had to stand up for my skepticism about traditional grades and what they mean, and lay out my sincere doubts about the necessity of "rigor" as it's currently presented in my school. I had to talk about how my desire to be successful as a teacher was innately tied to my progressive roots and my suggestions for how progressive educational structures could work in the school meant I was inherently supportive of the school as a whole. I had to defend my matter-of-fact style, making clear that what I say is simple honesty rather than a running character attack, and fight the notion that failing kids isn't personal per se, but rather an event for which the collective whole of a school is responsible.
I had to defend a core vein of my character: the work I do, and more importantly, how I do it and why that method is so important.
It got to me. It still gets to me. Because I sometimes feel like I'm the only person I have to acquit me. After all, I've never done anything else or felt any other way. I am what I was labeled to be on day one here: Progressive (with a capital P). It was a terrifying exchange that left me feeling a vacuum of confidence even though I know I had the courage to call it all out as ill-informed and alarmist.
-------------------------
"Dudley?"
"Yeeeeeeah?"
"Is hell a swear?"
I get questions like this all the time in my Engineering class, a motley crew of boys who drive trucks and girls who are actually motherfucking adults who do some pretty advanced adulting, students who all share in common a lack of uncertainty with what to do with themselves when they "grow up."
"Um...well, I guess I'd have to say that if you're talking about hell as a deity, or a place where souls go, which has lots of different meanings, then I'd say no..."
"...but..."
"...but, if you're telling someone to go to hell, then I'd have to say yes."
They seem satisfied with the answer. Another student pipes up.
"What about pissed? Like, how about I'm so pissed off right now?"
I can tell they're pushing boundaries, but I bite.
"Still no. There are worse things you can say than to say you're pissed off, because sometimes you just need to put words to how you're feeling."
Another satisfied nod.
For twenty more minutes, I discuss several theoretical profanities. I deem some referable offenses and others not, but make clear my stance: that outside of class I swear like a sailor, but don't do so at all at work because it is neither the time nor the place, and knowing the difference is a skill which must be executed in life is to know when profanity is appropriate, and with whom it is appropriate. I firmly believe kids should know the difference: sometimes it pays to swear, and sometimes it really really doesn't.
"Thanks, Dudley. I am glad that we can talk about real things with you."
"Don't mention it."
Real things. That conversation will hang forever in time in my mind and theirs.
I don't regret it in the slightest. It was the best way that I could express to my students in the moment that I am a human, that I recognize their humanity, and that the rules aren't a ruler with which I intend to browbeat them.
----------------------
I will never wish for the ability to see the future from the past and vice versa as Louise Banks does in Arrival, or as the Tralfamadorians do in Slaughterhouse Five (one of my favorite books). This time, I came out on the winning side of the "should you redo your life" question.
I think I merely have one regret: that I didn't realize sooner that teaching is the careful choosing of the right conversation or the right words, the right time to express your humanity, the right stance about what matters, just like teaching science is choosing the right story for the job, whether it is some shade of wrong or not.
I am happy with the amber I find myself trapped in; I think I've merely decided that reflection is hard on me.
--------------------------
It has been a semester, and the evidence that I've done a shitton of good work is everywhere.
I have filled notebooks with Geometry notes. I have a Google Drive full of papers for my graduate classes. My colleague and I have mapped a scope and sequence of 63 major concept groups in STEM for the creation of our new STEM Project cohort (which we have yet to name but that we're told must have a flashy name soon). I have survived a semester of teaching at the University, and while I can safely say it is against my grain, I have grown from the experience. I run a state chess affiliate with moderate success, and I'm playing better chess. I live in a dormitory with fantastic kids on a campus where I have much to be grateful for.
I have a healthy happy daughter, and (hopefully) a healthy happy spouse.
People I admire and look up to, people I work closely with, people I love, have told me they care about me, they're proud of me, they're grateful for me.
There is much to be happy about.
-------------------------
And, yet, I found myself watching the end of the movie Arrival on Saturday night, a movie about the frailty and beauty and flexibility of language and time, pondering this very question. Would I change things if I could see the whole domain of my life, from start to finish, in its entirety, knowing that I could defy the paradoxes so typical of these thought experiments (self-fulfilling prophecies and bootstrap loops and alternate universes)? Were there parts of my life I would erase at the expense of others? Would I live what I was set out to live if given the choice?
It is moments like these that I am tempted to say yes, I would change things. I know that this thought experiment is silly at its core. If the thought experiment truly suggests fatalism, then the instant different choices are made the timeline would simply be another version I'm fated to, and the question is repeated. What's the point? The experiment should reach a loop and the answer of 'yes' or 'no' returns to free will: if yes, then live in the moment and start changing your life; if no, then why worry?
It's hard to battle the idea that I've wasted my life, that I somehow could have done better things with my time and with my energy. That I could have made better choices in spite of the lessons those poor decisions have afforded me (and there have been so, so many). That somehow, being where I am, there's a potential that has gone unrealized and untapped. It is a nagging feeling, albeit an irrational one, and at every turn of introspection I encounter I grapple with this feeling, without fail.
-------------------------
Before Thanksgiving break, I had to defend my entire educational philosophy. One of my department chairs laid out a full vision of how I was viewed: that I was a "Montessori" guy* who was hands off, didn't believe in grades, didn't believe in structure, wasn't "with" the traditional way of "doing school" and so it wasn't clear whether I was "for" or "against" my school in general. I was furious. I felt so enraged to have to stake out my actual ground on terms that felt less like altruism and more like survival. I had to stand up for my skepticism about traditional grades and what they mean, and lay out my sincere doubts about the necessity of "rigor" as it's currently presented in my school. I had to talk about how my desire to be successful as a teacher was innately tied to my progressive roots and my suggestions for how progressive educational structures could work in the school meant I was inherently supportive of the school as a whole. I had to defend my matter-of-fact style, making clear that what I say is simple honesty rather than a running character attack, and fight the notion that failing kids isn't personal per se, but rather an event for which the collective whole of a school is responsible.
I had to defend a core vein of my character: the work I do, and more importantly, how I do it and why that method is so important.
It got to me. It still gets to me. Because I sometimes feel like I'm the only person I have to acquit me. After all, I've never done anything else or felt any other way. I am what I was labeled to be on day one here: Progressive (with a capital P). It was a terrifying exchange that left me feeling a vacuum of confidence even though I know I had the courage to call it all out as ill-informed and alarmist.
-------------------------
"Dudley?"
"Yeeeeeeah?"
"Is hell a swear?"
I get questions like this all the time in my Engineering class, a motley crew of boys who drive trucks and girls who are actually motherfucking adults who do some pretty advanced adulting, students who all share in common a lack of uncertainty with what to do with themselves when they "grow up."
"Um...well, I guess I'd have to say that if you're talking about hell as a deity, or a place where souls go, which has lots of different meanings, then I'd say no..."
"...but..."
"...but, if you're telling someone to go to hell, then I'd have to say yes."
They seem satisfied with the answer. Another student pipes up.
"What about pissed? Like, how about I'm so pissed off right now?"
I can tell they're pushing boundaries, but I bite.
"Still no. There are worse things you can say than to say you're pissed off, because sometimes you just need to put words to how you're feeling."
Another satisfied nod.
For twenty more minutes, I discuss several theoretical profanities. I deem some referable offenses and others not, but make clear my stance: that outside of class I swear like a sailor, but don't do so at all at work because it is neither the time nor the place, and knowing the difference is a skill which must be executed in life is to know when profanity is appropriate, and with whom it is appropriate. I firmly believe kids should know the difference: sometimes it pays to swear, and sometimes it really really doesn't.
"Thanks, Dudley. I am glad that we can talk about real things with you."
"Don't mention it."
Real things. That conversation will hang forever in time in my mind and theirs.
I don't regret it in the slightest. It was the best way that I could express to my students in the moment that I am a human, that I recognize their humanity, and that the rules aren't a ruler with which I intend to browbeat them.
----------------------
I will never wish for the ability to see the future from the past and vice versa as Louise Banks does in Arrival, or as the Tralfamadorians do in Slaughterhouse Five (one of my favorite books). This time, I came out on the winning side of the "should you redo your life" question.
I think I merely have one regret: that I didn't realize sooner that teaching is the careful choosing of the right conversation or the right words, the right time to express your humanity, the right stance about what matters, just like teaching science is choosing the right story for the job, whether it is some shade of wrong or not.
I am happy with the amber I find myself trapped in; I think I've merely decided that reflection is hard on me.
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