big sigh

She-ra called today...no, wait...I called her. No matter. We spoke on the phone this afternoon. It was a nice conversation. Her dog is in the doggy hospital overnight; she was sick during Christmas and it has persisted, so my entire household is worried. We are a pet-loving family, although I only have it in my to "love" a cat--I can hardly handle him at times.

Anyhow, our conversation turned to my personal self-esteem issues. She said that she went to my professional website (I felt need to have a website for my business, a step I'm glad I made in the marketing of myself) and read every single testimonial written by ex-university students of mine. After that, she said, how could I doubt myself?

-But that's work. Professionally I'm fine.
-But so much of what was said has to do with who you are as a person. You as a person comes through in you as a teacher. I especially liked the guy who said, "And I was the one who saw all the evaluations."

I have always separated the working me from the personal me. I always felt so differently pulled by what were often opposing forces acting on my personality in different situations that, when I was young, I questioned if I could be schizophrenic (not having any real idea what schizophrenia was really all about, of course...just to illustrate how different my personalities were). When at school, I was incredibly outgoing and outspoken but could not be that way at home. I rarely had friends over because I felt torn in how I ought to act...the way my friends know me, or the way my family knows me.

I have to be honest...sometimes I go into a classroom (especially one filled with anywhere from 20-40 students) and I don't know what the hell I am doing. But somehow, and I have no idea how, everything magically works out and we always end up with a wonderful experience in which all proclaim to have learned so much..."Oh, fulano de tal never explained it like that." "Oh, NOW I get it." What I would always call "light bulb moments." To be brutally honest, I sometimes felt like a fake, going in and 'teaching'. Relating. Telling stories. Making jokes. Creating characters. Playing games. Grabbing interest and holding onto that interest and that attention and not letting go, and in the meantime cramming whatever I could into those heads, even if indirectly. I could blah and blah on and on about how I was educated in the methodology, blah blah...but everyone in my graduate program was so educated in methodology at Tulane. Few could actually practice it.

So I'm a good teacher. There are good teachers and there are teachers that suck. There are teachers that believe that anybody could be a teacher, and there are those who believe that those who were born to be teachers were born to be teachers. They are the ones that do it for love, not for the money...because there is no money in teaching.

But does being a good teacher equate to being a good person? A good mother? A good friend? A good sister? A good daughter? No, not necessarily. That's where I seem to lack. I feel like, over the past 15-16 years I have obsessed over learning to become the best whatever-it-is-I-can-educate-myself-to-become (note the goal orientation) that I have left the rest of Me on the back burner to simmer. In the process, that Me became stagnant and stale, unappetizing to the sight and unpleasant to the taste.

2008. A year to redefine, to get that back. When I was in my early 20s, I told myself I never want to me a 50 year old who said, "I wish I would have..." I'm only 35 and here I am.

Let's see what we can do. 365 days is a lot of time.

...or is it?