I imagine that by now, you've all come to realize that life sucks and you should get a helmet. In fact, I've heard rumors going around that someone's putting "Life Sucks; Get a Helmet" on the back of a T-shirt and attributing it to Mr. Wong. Let the record show that I'm not the first one to use that phrase - I just say it often to you guys because I want to prepare you for the realities of growing up.
That's what it's really about, isn't it? You want to be taken seriously; you want to be treated with respect and dignity. So with that in mind, I made a promise to myself, before the school year began, that I wouldn't patronize you and that I would be as honest with you as my job would allow me to be. I would like to think that I've done that. I know that nobody here explicitly requested that I treat you all like grown-ups, but then again, I wouldn't be a very good teacher if I needed to be told what to do in order to do it. If I needed that, I'd be, well... a student.
There's a catch, though - on a side note, one of the things you'll realize about being grown up is that there's usually a catch - and that catch is that if you wanted to be treated like an adult, you have to be prepared to accept the responsibilities of being an adult as well. For example, think of all the times you didn't hand in your assignment, for whatever reason. What was my response to your reasons or the excuses you made? "I don't care." Plain and simple. But that's what it's like to be an adult. People won't take you seriously unless you're prepared to take responsibility for your decisions. That's rather important so I'm going to say that again: people won't take you seriously unless you're prepared to take responsibility for your actions.
That's why growing up has nothing to do with age. You don't "become an adult." There's no test to write; no certificate of adulthood. You just... are, one day - there isn't a set amount of knowledge you have to have that grants you admission into adulthood. And just because you're still wandering through life, trying to figure out how it works, doesn't mean that you're not grown up. If being an adult meant figuring out life, no one would ever get there. Rather, it means doing things like, thinking about what you're doing before you do them, realizing how your choices affect your lives and others, and taking responsibility for those actions. I always come back to this last point because students hate doing this. I mean, I've spent the entire year forcing it down your throat and there are still some of you who choke on it and cough it back into my face. Believe me, if you think it's a hard lesson to swallow, imagine the half-digested version of it spewed into your face - that's what it's like to be a teacher. But, you know... like I said, I treat you like adults because that's kind of what you ask from me...
Except you're not an adult. You're 14 (or 15). You're a teenager. You're in the phase of your life when you want the privileges of being an adult without needing to deal with adult responsibilities (like paying bills or having 30 kids sit in front of you every day for 10 months and not screwing them up). You are, in many ways, still kids. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, you'll never have as much time, energy, or excuses to do dumb stuff than right now. Because of this, I would like to apologize for a few things:
1. Forcing you to act like an adult.
2. Forcing you to understand how hard life is or can be.
3. Calling you out every time you did something stupid.
4. Being cuttingly sarcastic when you've done something stupid.
5. Being cuttingly sarcastic in general.
6. Being unsympathetic when you've complained about stuff (see: life sucks; get a helmet).
7. Not taking you to see The Hunger Games (even though that totally was not my fault and besides, you've had to do English work on Fridays a grand total of 5 times this year and I'm willing to bet that most of you wouldn't give up not doing work every Friday for the entire year in exchange for one morning off in April).
8. Telling you that I don't care about you.
Because of course, that last one's not true: I care about all of you immensely. Most of you kind of figured that out awhile ago but, you know, in case you didn't, there you have it. I do care about my students; each one of you, individually. It's just weird, you know, because in June, you walk out that door and chances are, I'll never hear from you ever again. That's one of the things about this job that gets to me sometimes: we see each other every day for 10 months and at the end of June, that's it. June's funny that way. On the one hand, it's the least stressful month, at least for L.A. 9 teachers, because your writing PAT is over. On the other hand, it's also the most stressful month because it means I'm running out of time, not to prepare you for English 10 - you're all well equipped for that - but to do something, anything, that will make your life a little bit easier.
That's the worst part of my job, by the way: the realization that after 10 months of seeing you every day, I don't exactly know how to make your lives easier because I don't know anything about you. I really don't. I know everything about your writing and reading abilities and I have some general knowledge about your habits and your personality, but I have no idea what's important to you. Seriously, try me. Pick any one person in this room and I'll bet I have no idea what the most important thing is in your life, right now. That's terrifying. It's terrifying that after spending so much time with you, I can't even guess what you care about the most. And that's 100% not your fault - that's an indictment of our education system. Sure, you know how to write a proper sentence (at least, most of you do) and understand that you don't use contractions in formal letters, but would I rather have you know how to do that, or would I rather have you be a good person who understands and is able to separate the important issues in your life from the unimportant stuff?
You ask me, every so often, why I chose to become a teacher. Of course, I've always told you it's because, while I hate kids, I hate adults more. That's true, by the way. But the real reason why I chose to become a teacher is because I have always felt that it's important to make a difference in other people's lives. At the end of the day, I feel like the only real way you can measure your life is by measuring the lives of others. I thought back to when I was in high school. Now, I "did" high school pretty well. I had a lot of friends, I had a lot of fun; good marks, bands, sports teams, leadership... basically, it was a good time. And yet, looking back, I always kinda wished that I had someone in my life (who were not my parents) who maybe could have warned me about the stupid decisions I made or the people I hurt or how some stuff wasn't as important as I thought they were.
I have tried my best this year to be that person for you. But now I'm thinking that maybe I can't. Maybe that "kind" of person doesn't exist. I think they're called "mentors" and a long time ago, I think that was part of our job description as teachers. It might still be, but I'm not quite sure you see us that way anymore. Maybe it's just trial by fire with you guys and, like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, we just have to let you fall. In that sense, maybe you're a lot more like adults than we think.
Life is not easy. And you should get that helmet. But there will be times when you won't need that helmet because life can also be amazing. It can be hilarious. If something is important to you, fight for it - as long as the juice is worth the squeeze. And if, at any point, you find that you're not where you thought you'd be, it's ok; just go with it. Like I said, nobody has all the answers - not even adults - and that may seem a little scary, but that's life, you know, and it's pretty much all we've got.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
11:01 PM
New layout?!
Saturday, April 07, 2012
9:34 PM
I've had a bit of a breakthrough with regards to my whole problem with work and society. In the past few weeks/months, I've been confronted with the idea that 80% of people don't end up doing what they love for a living and that's the social norm. I, of course, rebelled against that idea, my general argument being, "the fact that something is a norm does not make it good." You need only to read/be familiar with dystopian novels to understand why the argument that "this is simply what life is like," seems like a dangerous argument when discussing why someone is dissatisfied with the way things are currently going. Lately, though, something else has occurred to me.
I'm thinking that having a job that renders you exhausted at the end of the day is a problem. Some people might argue that being able to relax and enjoy yourself post-work is the justification for going to work in the first place but I'm not so sure it's enough. To be fair, this isn't an original idea - I think Marx once talked about this in his manifesto. He argued that the problem with capitalism is alienation - the idea that people do not do meaningful, creative work, and instead, spend their lives toiling away at things that don't give them a sense of fulfillment.
When I taught this idea to my class, a few years ago, one of my students pointed out that, even if we accept that alienation occurs in the workplace, it discounts the idea that people work so that they can do *other* things when they are not working. Yes, it would be optimal if everyone could be doing meaningful work but society isn't really equipped to function that way. After all, *someone* has to pick up the garbage and chances are there aren't enough people who find "garbage collection" to be meaningful labor. So to the student's point, perhaps capitalism offers a compromise: work at a job you may not like for 40 hours a week so that you may spend the rest of the time doing something you enjoy.
However, I'm thinking, what if we've taken that idea too far? When the physical and/or mental strain of working at a job takes its toll on people, I think it may create the impression that we are rewarded for a labors by being allowed to relax/enjoy life. In a sense, the "goal" of life, is then, to get to a point where you can relax or enjoy it. I have a problem with this.
The longer I work, the more I'm convinced that the "point" of life really ought to be creative/fulfilling work. This sounds very "protestant ethic" of me but I'm thinking that we'd all find life far more meaningful if we were allowed to constantly create meaning by working on things we think are important. Relaxation is good and all, but I don't think it should be the point. That's like saying, "We work so we are allowed to not work," when it really should be, "We work so we are allowed to work on things we like."
I think this is the main reason why I always thought of my parent's lives are very boring when I was growing up. To an extent, I understand it a lot better now and I recognize that my parents don't lead as hellish of an existence as I thought. Nonetheless, it hasn't changed my impression that my parents "work to not work," i.e. they do work, not because they have outside endeavors, but so that they enjoy the feeling of not working. Of course, I suppose that "raising children," would constitute "meaningful work" but now that my brother and I are out of the house, I don't know what they're doing.
Now, I am not, for a minute, saying that the feeling of "not working" aka R&R isn't good or worth working for. I'm just saying that it seems problematic, to me, that "work work" drains you to the point where R&R becomes the *purpose* of work, rather than the "brief respite I take before engaging in this other thing that actually means something to me." Now I understand why business owners, for example, are able to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and not quit - to them, running their own business *is* meaningful labor and it's a hell of a lot preferable to working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, on alienating labor just so you can have more time to recover from having your soul lacerated during that time.
