Transitions are Exhausting

Warning:  I'm in a very emotional place as I'm working through some personal stuff, so expect this to be a self-indulgent post with a lot of rambling.

If you are a parent of school-aged kids, you have probably had the experience of your child falling asleep in the car on the way home from school during the first week.  You probably assume it is because they are getting up earlier than they did in the summer, and that is partly true.  But there is another reason.  Learning new things takes a lot of energy.  

I used to notice that I was especially hungry on days when I taught something difficult.  People laughed at me when I said that.  Then, I found data to vindicate me.  While some processes in the body burn fat or protein in addition to carbohydrates, the brain burns only glucose, and when it is especially active, it burns a lot of it).  So a hard exam or learning activity can drop blood sugar, making the learner tired and hungry.

I've spent this week learning - all day, every day, everything I did.  I've started a new job at the YMCA, and learning the computer system is as overwhelming as trying to get a drink of water from an open fire hydrant.  In addition to the energy drain of all this brain work, I have also had the emotional impact of leaving my 25 year teaching career, where I was supremely confident in my abilities, to doing nearly everything wrong for a week because I was doing it for the first time.  I think I have clocked in and out correctly exactly one time.  Once, I even answered the phone with the name of the wrong branch.  Even though everyone has been very kind and understanding (can I keep using "It's my first week" as an excuse for the next five years?), it has been . . . a lot.  At the end of a shift, even if it was only five hours, I was exhausted and hungry.  

There's also changing email addresses, phone numbers, and passwords on literally everything I do online.  I didn't realize how many things my email address was attached to.  The refurbished laptop I bought online has about 400 kernel panics a day, requiring a reboot every time, sometimes four times in one paragraph of writing (although that has helped me get used to my new password, for sure).  I now understand why my middle and high school students wanted to eat all day long.

I knew this transition would be emotionally difficult, but I'm not sure I was prepared for just how difficult.  Do you know the Neil Diamond song, "I Am I Said"?  It's about his move from New York to Los Angeles at the start of his music career.  There's a line in it that resonates with me right now.  It goes, "LA's fine, but it ain't home.  New York's home, but it ain't mine no more."  I am really looking forward to making the Y my home, but it isn't just yet.  GRACE is home, but when I got on GroupMe this morning to report a problem to the Cycle Instructors group and saw that I had been removed from the GRACE groups, it hit me hard that it really means I don't work there anymore.

I wanted to work at the Y because I want to be part of their mission and to help people.  I don't yet have the feeling that I am doing that.  And, of course I don't; it has only been a week.  Even though my role is problem solving, I don't yet know how what problems there are, much less how to solve them.  In my brain, I know that I will have that sense eventually and that this is just my entry into this mission and that every job is necessary for the place to function, but after several weeks of students and colleagues telling me how meaningful my work as a teacher was, I am experiencing emotional whiplash as I understand that I will have to rebuild that in my journey at the Y.  When I broke my iPod this morning on the way out of the house, I sat in the car and cried for a few minutes before ordering a replacement I wasn't expecting to spend money on.

But God is good y'all.  He gives me little reassurances when I need them.  This week, there have been a couple.  On Friday, I was subbing for a cycle class and saw that my boss was on the roster to observe.  That made me pretty nervous because I've only taught five classes.  She's a super positive person that says things like, "You're gonna crush it," but there is never way to not be nervous when you are being evaluated.  As I arrived and changed into my cycle shoes, I noticed that someone had put one of the scripture slips from the bowl on top of the sound system.  I unfolded it and found this.

You probably cannot read it, but it says, "Isaiah 41:10 - So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."  I stuck it in my pocket next to the microphone pack and reminded myself of it throughout the class.

My friend, Kevin Washburn, recently published a book on resilience, called Uprise: Building Resilience in Ourselves and Others.  I bought it because I love Kevin and wanted to support him, but I honestly didn't expect to find things that spoke to me because I already considered myself a fairly resilient person.  I had started it a couple of weeks ago and then had to pause to read a different book because of a study we are doing at church this Monday night.  Today was the first time I had a chance to pick Uprise up again.  And even the pause in reading this was God-ordained.  He wanted to me to read pages 49-51 after this week of training.  On page 49, I found these words - "Mastery, where we can perform a skill without thinking, takes time to develop.  First, we establish accuracy; then we build efficiency.  That's why patience is a critical component of the learning mindset. First attempts require feedback and adjustment before additional tries increase accuracy.  This is true especially when trying something new."  It's not like I didn't know this.  I have even taught about it to others when presenting on retrieval practice and formative assessment.  But somehow, seeing it on a page in black and white made it feel more real.  While neither of these moments have prevented me from feeling all of the feelings I described above, they reminded me of how much difference it makes to trust God and how he designed learning as I move forward.  

This blog is supposed to be about education, so let me give this piece of advice to teachers.  If you want to empathize with your students who are learning and making mistakes, try something new and difficult this summer.  Pick something you are likely to be really bad at in the beginning.  Analyze your own frustration in learning needlepoint or basketball or poetry, whatever pushes you out of your comfort zone.  When school starts back in the fall, you will better understand students, model the learning process for them, and be able to tell them how you overcame obstacles.

Now, I need to post this quickly before my computer reboots again.