the sisyphean requirement.

'Does anyone have an questions?'

The silence produced increases the atmospheric pressure in the room. The student's aren't giving me much to work with. Come on! Say something! You're starting to lose them! The reality is, I've probably lost them a while ago. When the first recitation started - my first impression lost them. Or my demeaner. Regardless, I now have eyes of a few who are looking at me expectedly so we can jump to the next boring bit, or those who aren't looking at me trying to waste time. They can smell the anxiety wafting off me, probably. I came into a recitation hall that day the same way an elementary student would waddle up to the teacher to correct a grade. 

'If not I guess, um, we'll move on to the next thing.'

    I have said this line probably three times now.

--------------------

Reading Palmer's The Courage to Teach, after the entire anxiety and self-doubt episode (ones that are becoming way to frequent) I related strongly to the notion of identity. Especially during the big debate about how much identity should be generated when it came to learning.

I grew up realizing I had to separate myself more consciously than others needed to. I friend told me how they wrote exactly as they spoke. I was envious of people in that regard, being able to 'be themselves'. Culturally, I was made fun of for being myself. I liked eating fried rice, I like my Viet name my grandmother gave me, but I had to prove to others that something about my culture, about me, was worth not ridiculing. It was a fight; to be the funniest, to be the smartest, to be cool, to be confident, to be normal. But, as Palmer puts it, it's all fraudulent. In all these attempts to be 'that person', I really am none of those things. It was apparent as I was shuddering to find an answer in my hollow brain for how to come up with a research question. 

Another the other fist that comes down is my position in this particular course. It's not I don't think the material is important or that what I'm doing as TA in that class is necessary for the student's overall education in Comm., but what I have to offer now isn't what I had imagined in the beginning, I feel so disconnected from the material, and I imagine the students can tell. How do I make them care when I don't know if I truly care about the material either?  This huge disconnect because I can't control the material, the way the class is ran, who I am in the class, it all feels like I'm walking on a treadmill, going nowhere constantly.

____

But #LifeGoesOn, in weird ways. I found after reading Palmer's first chapter, and reflecting on packing up that day, an staring out into a fellow teacher's room, empty except for two lingering students with questions, how little of this world actually knows me. What made me special, if something like that were to truly exist within me, isn't something I had shown or given. Who I am is a mystery, one that had become more infuriating than intriguing. Reveal, don't conceal. It's like when I was a child, being overwhelmingly excited for my mother to show up at a show-and-tell, jumping to fellow child-students and exclaiming in a uncontrivable manner, 'That's my mom! That's my mom!' That child should come home now.

I could wait, for a subject to fall out of the sky and be elated to share it to the rest of the world in an important manner, but fundamentally, I don't know who I am in others eyes, as much as I claim that I do. Dr. Ponce, my technical writing professor and the one in charge of my undergrad minor, had told the class, 'in order to properly market your self-brand, you need take that up yourself. Don't let others decide that image.' I listened then, but I haven't put that part of myself into practice quite yet. Maybe I should give it a try soon.

    #LifeGoesOn

Palmer, P. J. (2011). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. Hanmunhwa.