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December 13, 2006
Inadequacy Revisited
Why, why do I always feel like I'm not doing anything? Like I haven't done anything? Like I spend my life sitting around like a lump, taking up space and air that could be used for other, more interesting, more useful people?
I was feeling like that the other day and then my friend Desiree pointed out I'd done quite a bit recently. So let's recap my November:
◊ Two weekends of Death of a Salesman performances including one Thursday morning matinee.
◊ I voted.
◊ My lovely friends Cyndi & Karma came for a visit, as did my parents. (So there was all the prep for that. Well, not for Cyndi & Karma, obviously, since I didn't know they were coming.)
◊ Wrote a 52K word novel (even though this year's sucked huge, hairy rocks).
◊ Created 10 ATC's & sent them off to various parts of the US & Australia.
◊ Graded around 100 student persuasive speeches, along with their self-critiques, critical analyses and mini-speeches. (And taught 8 50 minute classes a week.)
◊ Read two books I'm thinking about using next semester, selected films to watch in class and started trying to figure out how to put together the schedule & syllabus for Sex & Culture.
◊ Shadowed the instructor who I was hired to replace for one of her Sex & Culture classes.
◊ Worked monologues with beginning acting students so they could get another perspective (in 5 75 minute classes a week).
◊ Posted 22 blog entries.
◊ Spent a week in McCall with family.
◊ Took Arboretum pictures.
Obviously, I did quite a bit in the 30 days of November. So why do I look back on it and think, "I'm so useless. I have done nothing of value."
On Monday I finished grading my students' self-evaluations for their final speeches. They had to look back over the semester and analyze their work in light of where they started. And so many of them talked about how much more self-confident they feel and how much better they were at the end than they were in the beginning. Part of that is because of me. Because of how I work with them and how I structure the parts of the class that aren't set in stone by the course syllabus (over which I have no control). That should be accomplishment enough.
But I can't even take a moment to rest on my laurels and say, "Wow. Good work. Look at everything you've done." Instead, I worry that I can't continue to prove myself worthy of--I don't even know what. I don't know what I have to prove or to whom I have to prove it, only that once again I'm failing to measure up. And I couldn't even tell you what standards of measurement I'm using.
What in the name of virgin olive oil is wrong with me?
Posted by sally at December 13, 2006 10:26 AM
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