We’re having confession time here, because it’s always confession time on this blog: I’ve been avoiding this space.
The month of April has been a difficult one for me. Work-wise, it hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been working through the poems I collected from my eighth graders (now I have collected them a month ago and still haven’t finished them… whoops) and mostly chilling in the back while my mentor teaches Romeo and Juliet. I had another awful class where 4 students didn’t listen, disrupting learning for the other 22 in the room, and that was frustrating and brought on some self-doubts. I haven’t had a ton of extra evening or weekend commitments.
April should have been pretty good. But in the first week of April, I decided to reconsider a job in Massachusetts that I had previously passed up on. By the last week of April, I decided against that job again. Between those two times, I bounced back and forth between the uncertainty in Grand Rapids and the security in Massachusetts. I prayed, I talked to my housemates, I asked for prayer requests, and I tried to join Creston CRC, which was ultimately the thing that made my housemates and I say, “If I’m trying to join a church, shouldn’t I be trying to stay here?”
I should be secure and content, knowing that God will provide for me a job in Grand Rapids somewhere. But let me just tell you, I spent the last four minutes searching charter school jobs in Grand Rapids because that’s one of the only fields that I haven’t tapped into yet. There have been two times when I’ve been driving home from my Tuesday night seminars—tired after a full day of school, three hours of class, heading to another hour or so of devotions, and frustrated with my situation—and God has shown me that he’s got me through a beautiful sunset or a song that spoke to me. Yet whenever I’m around my fellow student teachers who are getting jobs and becoming more secure in what they are doing next year, my self-doubts start to creep in. What if I’m just good at school and I can’t translate that into being a teacher? How am I going about the job search wrong? I thought I was doing decently at this, but no one is giving me a call back. What do I do?
I’d like to give a neat and tidy answer to those questions, but I’m still in the weeds you all. I’m still struggling to let God take control of this part of my life that I want to control so badly and that I feel like I am controlling somewhat—I do have to send in the applications, right? This job search is showing me a lot about how I value myself, which I thought was dictated by my own standards but turns out is dictated by others’ affirmation of me, and how I deal with uncertainty and fear. Maybe God’s been preparing me for this through studying Jesus & Peter walking on water through John Ortberg’s book If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat; maybe he’s been preparing me through conversations that I’ve had with my housemates about the spiritual disciplines; maybe he’s been preparing me for this through Mom’s death. All I know is it feels unfair to have worked this hard and have felt so passionate about the work I’m doing in education only to be roadblocked by my lack of experience and job searching skills.
I know it’ll all work out. I just want to tell that to the Alex who is hanging off the cliff, feeling her fingers getting slick, unable to look down and see the outcropping ten feet below.
The month of April has been a difficult one for me. Work-wise, it hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been working through the poems I collected from my eighth graders (now I have collected them a month ago and still haven’t finished them… whoops) and mostly chilling in the back while my mentor teaches Romeo and Juliet. I had another awful class where 4 students didn’t listen, disrupting learning for the other 22 in the room, and that was frustrating and brought on some self-doubts. I haven’t had a ton of extra evening or weekend commitments.
April should have been pretty good. But in the first week of April, I decided to reconsider a job in Massachusetts that I had previously passed up on. By the last week of April, I decided against that job again. Between those two times, I bounced back and forth between the uncertainty in Grand Rapids and the security in Massachusetts. I prayed, I talked to my housemates, I asked for prayer requests, and I tried to join Creston CRC, which was ultimately the thing that made my housemates and I say, “If I’m trying to join a church, shouldn’t I be trying to stay here?”
I should be secure and content, knowing that God will provide for me a job in Grand Rapids somewhere. But let me just tell you, I spent the last four minutes searching charter school jobs in Grand Rapids because that’s one of the only fields that I haven’t tapped into yet. There have been two times when I’ve been driving home from my Tuesday night seminars—tired after a full day of school, three hours of class, heading to another hour or so of devotions, and frustrated with my situation—and God has shown me that he’s got me through a beautiful sunset or a song that spoke to me. Yet whenever I’m around my fellow student teachers who are getting jobs and becoming more secure in what they are doing next year, my self-doubts start to creep in. What if I’m just good at school and I can’t translate that into being a teacher? How am I going about the job search wrong? I thought I was doing decently at this, but no one is giving me a call back. What do I do?
I’d like to give a neat and tidy answer to those questions, but I’m still in the weeds you all. I’m still struggling to let God take control of this part of my life that I want to control so badly and that I feel like I am controlling somewhat—I do have to send in the applications, right? This job search is showing me a lot about how I value myself, which I thought was dictated by my own standards but turns out is dictated by others’ affirmation of me, and how I deal with uncertainty and fear. Maybe God’s been preparing me for this through studying Jesus & Peter walking on water through John Ortberg’s book If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat; maybe he’s been preparing me through conversations that I’ve had with my housemates about the spiritual disciplines; maybe he’s been preparing me for this through Mom’s death. All I know is it feels unfair to have worked this hard and have felt so passionate about the work I’m doing in education only to be roadblocked by my lack of experience and job searching skills.
I know it’ll all work out. I just want to tell that to the Alex who is hanging off the cliff, feeling her fingers getting slick, unable to look down and see the outcropping ten feet below.
Post a Comment