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Tuesday, October 18, 2005
So: Young and restless
By Jocy So
Unraveling
OUR exam week is over. It is a hot Saturday and I am inside the teachers' office. No mall sales for me today. I stare bleakly at the piles of papers I have to check. I think of the coming workweek, the lessons I have to prepare, the grades I have to calculate, the activities I have to organize, and I feel a dull feeling of dread spreading throughout me.
When I finished college and came home, I itched to teach. My first year was filled with positive anxiety; I was hopeful and excited. I wanted to make a difference in my students' lives, to make them love learning, to show them how fun learning can be.
Nearly four years later, here I am, living my lifelong ambition to be a teacher, yet today I am without fun, without love for what I do. I am merely staring dispiritedly at piles of paperwork; the only thing in my mind is to get away, to have a break, to live a different life.
A co-teacher once said (half-jokingly) that she was going to burn all the formal and informal themes she had to check. It's understandable. I look at the papers that are the chain tying me to my desk on a Saturday when I could be malling, swimming, or plain resting, and all I want to do is chuck them out of the third floor window and watch them float in the air like kites.
But I didn't throw them out. Instead I continue checking. I continue noting down their grades. I continue doing something I have recently considered drudgery.
Long ago, back in high school, we watched the film "Dead Poet's Society" for our English class. As Robin William's character shook up the lives of his students in the movie, he also shook mine up. In the film I saw what passion, loving something enthusiastically, could do to someone. Whether it was poetry, or teaching, or a person, or life in general, it is important that we find something we love in order to bring meaning to our lives.
Carpe diem. Seize the day. That became my motto. Live each day to the fullest, as if it was your last. Find something that will make each day worth celebrating, worth living.
Ever since I was five years old I wanted to be a teacher. I never faltered from the belief that this is what I am meant to do. But to be honest, I have ceased to feel genuine passion and joy over my profession. I seem to be doing things because it's my job to do them. Sometimes I wonder what's the point of sacrificing my Saturdays, my energy to prepare for a class that very few of my students appreciate?
I remember planning a field trip for my class only to hear from some that it was boring and uninteresting. It took days to coordinate with the venue, to secure rides, to organize the trip, and only one single student out of the 108 uttered a word of thanks.
My co-teacher, a Math teacher, cried the other day. After days and days of lecturing, preparing activity sheets, borrowing time from other teachers just to review her students, many still flunked the exam. If students think teachers don't feel anything when they flunk, they're wrong. I know many who feel equally devastated as, if not more so than, the student who did not pass an exam.
Are our efforts for naught? How important is the time I use to prepare for a class, to read and check essays, to calculate grades? Why do I feel so utterly dispensable, insignificant, and unnecessary in the whole scheme of things? Why don't I feel passion or enthusiasm for my work? Why do I feel trapped and weary in a job that I thought would bring much meaning and joy in my life?
I don't want to hate my work because I want to continue teaching, but more and more I wonder whether I will be happy if I continue teaching in Davao year after year after year? Is it bad to wonder if there is more that I can experience aside from this?
Is it wrong to throw caution in the wind and seriously contemplate quitting my work for a bit to pursue my most secret, craziest dreams, like backpacking around the world and writing a book about my travels? Is it silly or childish to believe that this is really possible? That even without rich parents or a fat bank account or an American passport, I can take a year (or 2-3 months) off and just live my dream?
After all, when will I start doing what I wish to do? In an instant, the life we have could be gone. An earthquake, a tsunami, or a bad economy could take away our possessions. Life is short. While I can, I need to find something to be utterly passionate about. I need to do what I dream can make my life, no matter how short, to be as sweet and wonderful as it can be. I need to live my dream or else I will drown in piles of paperwork.
Jocy L. So teaches at Davao Christian High School, and welcome those who want to help her make her dream come true.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (October 18, 2005 issue)
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