Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

In which Jon Wong digresses from working on informal writing project (but on a related note):

Dear ____________

For the longest time, I always got uncomfortable whenever people asked me about what my book was "about." I mean, it's not like I didn't know what it was about - I was the one writing it after all - but I never knew how to sum it up in one succinct sentence. I mean, even if I allowed myself to use the term "coming-of-age," I would still have had to say, "It's a coming-of-age story of..." and again, I would hit a wall.

But then something funny happened. I was driving up to Fort McMurray in the middle of nowhere, Alberta, and it was the third day of the trip. It had been a grueling journey so far, thanks to the stress caused by driving through the United States, and both Grant and I were thankful to be back on Canadian soil - even if that soil was of the sketchy-outskirts-of-Winnipeg variety. At any rate, you had sent me a message earlier that day, asking about how the trip was so far, and when I read it that night, something occurred to me.

Do you know what I wanted to say? I wanted to say something along the lines of "I miss you and I've thought about you every day since I left." And that was the truth, you know? Of course, that's not what I ended up saying, but in that moment, I realized that this was what my book is about: it is about the idea - the tragedy - that we can never bring ourselves to say the things we want to say as often as we need.

We spend so much of our lives practicing our social skills and we've been conditioned, in some ways, to think that there's a time and a place for everything we could possibly want to say. We're concerned about how others might react if we let them know how we feel in what we perceive as the wrong context. So we hold it all in. And as a result, we will never say the wrong thing at the wrong time; we'll never have moments of awkwardness; we can avoid those moments that can seem devastating when they happen...

But we also miss out on the chance to connect with people. We miss out on the chance to tell others how they've affected our lives. We miss out on the chance that they might feel the same way about us. There are so many things that we choose to keep to ourselves; things that we're sometimes dying to share with others and... I don't know, I just think that it's a tragedy that we choose not to. And I think it's a tragedy that this choice is almost a knee-jerk reaction because we live in a society where we prefer to be ignorant if the truth doesn't confirm something we already want to hear.

That's really what my story is about. It's what my life's been about, really: treading the line between being honest about my feelings and following acceptable social protocol. So what'll it be? The next time we meet and you ask, "How was Fort McMurray?" how would you react if I turned and said, "Did you know I missed you?"

When I was in fourth year university, I remember reading an article in the journal that explored the idea that university students were too privileged; that the mere act of being accepted into a post-secondary institution (even one as highly regarded as Queen's) gave students a sense of entitlement that did not translate well when they found that the world does not fall at your feet simply because you are here.

Back then, I agreed with the article wholeheartedly. I have often touched upon a similar idea when I talk about how I expected everyone in university to blow me out of the water with how smart they are but found that aside from certain individuals (read: Christian), this was simply not the case. I know it sounds horribly arrogant, but it is and isn't, in a way. It is a little arrogant because I've asserted that I found people to be less smart than I expected, but it also isn't because I am still firmly convinced that these people exist in large numbers - I just didn't run into as many of them as I thought I would.

All this is simply to say, I understood the point the article was making. If *I* did not feel that being in university entitled me to anything beyond the opportunity of higher education, then by extension, those who were not smarter than me have no claims to anything more than that either.

Now, this stance of mine has not changed since then. I still agree with the article and I still don't believe that university students are entitled to anything beyond the opportunity to expand on their intellectual abilities. However, that being said, working in schools has put this in perspective, somewhat.

You see, getting into university was always somewhat taken from granted, for me. I didn't see what the big deal was, back in 2005, especially considering that I don't remember it being all that hard, nor was there any real concern about me NOT getting in. However, working in schools has really hammered in the extent to which I've always taken scholastic capabilities for granted. Of course, we all know that everyone has different strengths and the fact that someone is low-functioning in academia does not mean that he/she does not have the ability to be tremendously successful in another venture. But if we just focused on the idea of academia for a moment, I would just like to point out how ENORMOUS this field becomes.

Think of having a simple bachelor of arts degree. When you think of how many people have one and how hard a master's program is, and follow it up be thinking of how much harder it is to go one step further and get a PH.D. that B.A. doesn't really seem to hold too much water. And I'm talking about actually having a B.A. in your possession. Compare that to being in first year. I mean, just ask a 4th year student what it's like to read a first year paper. Rubbish, right? If a PH.D. is having your own private chef, the trickle-down theory already reduces being in first year to the equivalent of grocery shopping at Walmart. And grocery shopping at Walmart isn't really something that brings with it a sense of entitlement, is it?

But here's where it gets crazy - the fact that you are able to shop for groceries at Walmart already puts you above 75% of people who can't even afford to do that! And just like the huge economic disparity that exists between the rich and the poor - a disparity that is so large the two sides of the spectrum literally cannot comprehend one other - education works in much the same way. Can you imagine a university professor going into a grade 10 applied class and trying to teach them English? Every time I work with an applied English class (which will be every day for the next 8 months), I am struck by just how challenging academia is for them. I really am. And from there, I think about all the students (about 80% of the total, if the statistics I looked up are accurate) who simply will not be able to attend university because they do not have the intellectual ability (from an academic standpoint) to do so.

In the grand scheme of academia - from high school dropout to university professor - where does a first year undergraduate stand? Actually pretty high if you look at the percentage of the total population who attend university. Like top 20% high. It's simply that the disparity is so wide that no matter where you are, there's always a long way to look in either direction. So while I don't approve of the notion that undergraduates are looking down on the percentage of the population within their age range who don't have the academic standing to be where they are and thinking that they hold some privileged position in society because of this, I will at least acknowledge that the academic disparity exists in the downward direction. Privileged undergraduates aren't snobs who are on the ground floor looking down, they're at least snobs who are on the 13th floor looking down... they just haven't realized how many floors exist above.

I'm not happy about my apparent lack of inspiration on this blog. I was reading some of my old entries and I miss the days when my mind was free enough to think of random things of its own accord.

To the authors at dictionary/thesaurus.com:

The words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" are not antonyms of one another.

I feel as if the word "vagina" deserves a little bit more class. Could we please stop shortening it to "vag"?

Alright, so catch-up post number 1 - why Jon Wong is unhappy. I will post about why I'm happy once I find myself in that state. I will also post about Boy Meets World and How I Met Your Mother once I get a chance on a weekend of sorts.

So, here goes.

I alluded to this before, but I've gotten to a point where I am better able to articulate a deeper truth that ties into me and the teaching profession. You see, when you move away from the phase in your life known as "being a student" and into the adult life of jobs, careers, bills, and responsibilities, there are basically two ways to look at your working life. Or at least, there are two ways of looking at it in respect to how people manage to work at soul-lacerating jobs without killing themselves: you are either working at this job because you actually love doing what you do and are thus ok with the endless amount of "work" and responsibility that comes with the territory, or you are working at this job in order to make it possible for you to explore or indulge in another facet of life that brings you fulfillment.

Right? I mean, that's basically it. I either work as a teacher because I love teaching, or I work as a teacher because I am good at/can tolerate teaching to the extent that I am ok with doing it because I also get paid, which allows me to do things like, say, pay for badminton shuttles, buy a car and drive it to Barrie to go fishing and have dinner with the Griese family, or take my family out to dinner sometime. I mean, I know they say that teacher's "aren't in it for the money," but let's be honest here. We wouldn't work for free. At the end of the day, the teaching profession falls within the same economic equation as every other job: we work because we get monetary compensation.

What we really mean when we say that teacher's "aren't in it for the money" is that teachers ought to focus on "being good teachers," not, "how to make money." And even though I would argue that that ought to be the case for all jobs, it is emphasized in the teaching business because we have the responsibility to educate our country's youth. This is why teaching is a publicly funded enterprise and we have a union. The idea is that the government and union will take care of the money so we can focus our energies on being good teachers. In other words, money is a byproduct (though a necessary one) of teaching, not the focus.

Whether or not I actually love teaching, I will find out in a few years. It's possible that I do and I just lose it among the feeling of being perpetually swamped, overworked, and unprepared. I've been told that these thing abate, somewhat, as the years go on so I'm still open to the possibility that I'll love my job a few years down the line.

For now, though, I don't feel like I love teaching. And from there, I have realized that on top of that, I don't have a focus outside of my teaching life. I've been looking, since I got here, for something that I can use as a crutch, so to speak, for why I'm teaching until my secret love for my profession emerges (hopefully), and I haven't yet found it.

My grandmother once told me that it's not enough to earn money, you have to spend it as well. I think I'm beginning to understand what she means. She didn't mean it in the sense of "buy material things that will simulate happiness," she meant that you have to use that money, somehow, to do things that make you happy. You have to take your family out to dinner sometime and enjoy their company. You have to donate it to a cause you believe in. You have to spend it on flowers and soil because you enjoy gardening. The phrase "money can't buy happiness" comes from the idea that simply having money won't make you happy. However, you do need money to at least enable you to do the things that make you happy, right?

That's my sticking point right now. I feel like I'm just working for the sake of being productive. I mean, I got paid last week. What did I do with it? I paid my rent and bills, and bought food so that I can physically survive in order to work the next day. In fact, I feel very much like how I felt during my big funk in second/third year except I don't have the time to dwell on it now like I did back then.

Maybe that's how unhappiness sneaks up on you, like it snuck up on Katie. I remember when I was talking to her about her experience at Queen's and she was telling me that she felt so much pressure to do well that she ended up spending her entire time working... and she was so busy trying to meet these academic goals that 4 years later, she found herself sitting across a table from this chump in Leonard cafeteria with the realization that she wasn't happy.

So that's that. What am I going to do about it? I have no idea. At the very least, I can look back on this post in a few year's time and assess the extent to which I was right/wrong. To my future self, I hope you are happier than my current self.

I also need to post about a realization I had about why exactly I'm unhappy right now.

Since Christian's allowed to do it, I will too. I also have a post in mind (although mine's probably less earth-shattering than his) that I don't have the time to write about now. It has to do with my thoughts on Boy Meets World and How I Met Your Mother as the definitive television shows of my life thus far.