A Door Closes

Edited to add: Perhaps I should have titled this "I Close a Door"

In spite of the fact that I suspected that it was coming, I was still upset by the news that I did not pass my training to teach online here (I learned about it yesterday afternoon). Not that I really wanted to do it because saying that I did not enjoy teaching there is a tremendous understatement. The problem is that we really, really needed the money, so it was a bit of a mercenary job. And now I -- who was already super stressed out regarding the possible and very real need to try and sell this house (probably at a loss) -- am just so discouraged and worried about the future that I cannot even express.

On the one hand I have to admit that I am relieved because I felt chained to the work which included arduous hours grading (because I did my best to give the student actual feedback, unlike some of my colleagues -- I was in touch with 5 other candidates who did the first part of the training with me) and none of the intellectually challenging part of teaching (preparation, freedom to create my own syllabus, to choose what I get to teach, etc.), but on the other hand I feel the weight of failure on my shoulders. And that weight is heavy, very heavy indeed.

Lately I've noticed that my morale is low* because of the tenuous, complicated situation in my work at my son's school. In a nutshell, I am technically only a teacher's "aide" and, as such, I cannot make any big decisions. In addition, my way of dealing with children is quite different from the "old school" way of the other teacher/principal. Add to that the fact that I'm not the best of disciplinarians (the opposite of her) and I have two of my sons with me -- and she sometimes takes upon herself the role of educating them, which is OK with, but doesn't make for a very confident mother/teacher -- and you've got a really complex, almost toxic mix. I am happy there, the work is very relaxing. It doesn't pay well and I always leave 2-3 hours after school is out because of the things I have to prepare. However, I think that my self-esteem is being undermined, though, in spite of the fact that I don't feel it consciously. I can only pick up on that because I've been feeling depressed lately, with bouts of crying. Of course there's the whole thing with the uncertain future, etc, but still...

And now this. On a personal level, this feels a hundred times worse than when K lost his job back in 2007. That was an external situation we had no control over. This one feels like a conscious choice from my part to fail -- although I did try hard, but obviously not enough. I can rationalize this failure in many ways and some of these rationalizations are correct: my mentor was not very helpful and kind of set me up to fail when she called me on that second week and reduced me to tears and a pile of stress the next day, the requirements are almost unreasonable (having to grade 40 short responses in only 48 hours and still give meaningful feedback), and the whole thing emphasizes the system working smoothly in detriment of the students (it's a for-profit institution after all). And I could list several other rationalization that could help me feel better.

In the end, though, it all comes back to me and how "flawed" I am in some basic aspects of life and living: how I am not organized and disciplined enough, how I don't put duty over pleasure at all circumstances, how I tend to leave things for the last minute (and the fact that I we are two hours back and I had until 2 am to finish the grading didn't help my faulty reasoning). And those very real faults contributed to my failure. Sure, I can accept that I was not a good fit and that if I continued I'd probably struggle in the future and that there are probably many other jobs that can take advantage of my strong suits and in which my faults won't be a problem, BUT, which are those jobs and how am I ever going to come across them?

Blogging this is making me feel slightly better, but I'm pretty depressed right now. I will try to be back soon because I have other things (somewhat related to this) to share. So, see you in a bit. ;-)

* Originally I had written that "my psyche is already a bit damaged," but I thought that this was too strong, not to mention a bit preposterous, considering how little I actually know about psychoanalysis ;-)