When karma smacks you upside the head...

Following my recent theme of, "How did I screw up this week?" ....

Academically, all is blessedly smooth as can be expected. The workload seems insurmountable at moments, but I just keep on keepin' on, doing as much as I can, the best that I can, when I can...which is all I can do.

I'm studying and practicing to be a teacher, and, darn it, I want to be a better teacher than I sometimes think I'm capable of being. Now, as far as "pretend" lesson plans and reflective essays go...I probably don't give 100%, I'll admit it. Maybe that's where I'm failing. But I work with children every weekday, and this week, despite my best efforts, I was responsible for a few tough make-or-break moments. Two children (at different times) very nearly suffered serious injury because of either my momentary neglect or inexcusable ignorance. All is as well as can be and no one was seriously hurt or traumatized, and I KNOW I learned some very valuable lessons. It's those lessons that I'm trying desperately right now to focus on and draw out of this week from Teacher Hell. Most call them rookie mistakes; I call it the mark of inexperience.

I also learned a thing or two about karma. In the case of one of those poor children, the crisis was a head injury that required emergency care. (I had my back turned to the swing set and therefore missed out on an apparently cut-throat game of "Don't get kicked in the face!") Last night, a friend and I both changed direction too quickly without looking, and both got a face-full of each other, smack in the middle of our foreheads. We both quickly developed bumps eerily similar to the one that had earlier appeared on that child's head after having a run-in with a metal pole. Before I even thought to say "Ow!" I was cursing my own bad karma. It still hurts today, reminding me just how responsible I am for those kids.

I take my responsibility for these children seriously. It only took a moment for me to not have my eyes scanning the entire playground, and someone got hurt in a game that should never have started, and would have quickly ended had I allowed myself to be aware of it. In the Victorian era, men were still totally responsible for the women in their life. But what were the consequences if they didn't take that responsibility seriously? Somehow, the responsibility for women that men somewhere in history translated into "control" lost its original, Biblically inspired definition, and became a trust, an ownership over property. In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the duke apparently grew so annoyed by his wife that he arranged her death, and was currently attempting to court a new wife. How is it that certain individuals treat those that have been entrusted into their care with such frivolity and passivity? Why is there no concern for consequences?

I sure hope karma got him like it got me.

This week went considerably more smoothly than last week academically. I successfully managed to stay on top of my responsibilities, and I don't intend to fall behind again.

Even with the added stresses/bonuses (depending on how you look at things) of a Kappa Delta Pi ceremony, Valentine's Day, and the usual homework, I stayed on top, and I'm trying to stay there.

So, fortunately, I guess, it's been a fairly quiet week this time around and not much to report. We're beginning the Victorian era in English Lit and I'm curious about that. I don't believe I've read much if any Victorian literature; nothing that I've retained, anyway. I'm looking forward to jumping in and discovering the heartbeat of that era - what Victorians were thinking and feeling, what drove them to write what and how they did. Hopefully more to report on that soon.

What a week this has been. I had anxieties about taking an online class, knowing how easy it can be to miss information or misunderstand expectations - but I didn't anticipate missing an entire essay! I pride myself on my organization and discipline, so when I discovered that the class had turned in an essay that I was still waiting to be assigned, I panicked. I actually started contemplating the consequences of dropping the class, or the entire semester's classes, as I was beginning to face similar stress elsewhere and my initial, rash decision was to flee. Fight or flight, the age old decision of survival.

However, one merciful professor and a good night's rest later, I regathered myself and faced the week's onslaught valiantly. My weekend has been dedicated to playing catch-up and get-ahead, and I have a positive vibe about the course of the coming week.

When I'm not glued to the computer constructing essays, teacher work samples, lesson plans, and the like, I've taken refuge in the pages of Frankenstein. To take "refuge" in such a story is odd; but perhaps I'm empathizing with Victor's sense of failure and resulting hysteria, haha. But in all seriousness, I am noticing within myself that I'm perceiving symbolism and nether-meanings within the text on my own; whereas in the past, I waited for the teacher to point such things out and then I had that "ah-ha" moment and could deduce significance from the text.

The big lesson this week has been the necessity to pace my responsibilities, and fulfill them in a timely and measured manner. While this week has been extraordinarily hectic, I realized that much of that craziness would have avoided if I'd contacted the professor about the essay I foolishly decided to await word on. There were also times I had available the week prior to get some work done early, but told myself, "Why worry about it now? Enjoy the peace while you can." Well, hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?

Already, Frankenstein is creating such contrasting images in my mind from what I had developed based on cultural stereotypes alone. And I expected this, so no surprise there. Really, how often is it that American stereotypes accurately mirror art, literature, or even other cultures?

I'm still shallowly into Shelley's masterpiece at this point (slow beginnings make for slow, pained reading for me) but the further in I get, the more intrigued and interested I find myself. So, I have no inclination that one of the themes of this novel is cultural diversity (or resistance to it). But that is a theme that has meandered through my thoughts on the novel. And that is a simple reflection of the fact that I'm an elem. ed major - but as I learned prior to my last post, literature's meaning IS in the eye of the beholder.

It's not so much that I see cultural diversity within the context of Frankenstein. The bias around this image we've developed about the title character's creation (I believe I recently described him as a "tall, hulking green, rectangular mouth-breather, who grunts and walks around as though he's experiencing beginning stages of rigor mortise") reminded me of our culture's - our country's - preconceptions about the world around us. We have a very limited, boxed-set, color-by-number visual of various cultures in this world, not limited to ethnic/religious/national cultures. We've segmented our world to suit our comfort-zone bound scope, to separate ourselves from them, and them from us. We want to see this waffled map of a world, and shudder to think of this place as the melting pot that it is, and is fast becoming.