Log17: Honestly? This is hard.

Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds, in the sky you'll get by
If you smile through your fears and sorrows
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile.

That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile.

'Smile,' by Nat King Cole

*It has certainly been a while since I last tried to show some competence, or dare I say even eloquence, with the English language, so I beg your pardon should write like a fool.*

Has anyone else been having a difficult time adjusting to life in Korea?  Perhaps one would surmise that in light of how visibly upset I was on departure day I am weaker and more sensitive than others.  Maybe I am, and maybe I react without strength in new and foreign circumstances.


Smile.  I feel that's something I haven't done in a while.

Certainly I've smiled at the little antics my students have displayed or the warmth and support my teachers have shown.  Of course I've smiled, maybe even laughed, at the jokes and the buffoonery of high school students.  Frankly, who couldn't?

But you know that simple smile, the unfettered laugh that makes you forget everything and allows you to just live; to escape from the prison of things and time and be wholly yourself, unadulterated by questions, concerns, or thoughts?  The kind of joy you had when the recess bell rang, the kind of joy you have with your brothers, sisters and dearest friends, the kind of joy where you are joy and you become the very emotion you feel; the moments when energy positivity and love inundates you that you become ignorant of wrong, sin, or evil; the moments where you become the paradigmatic embodiment and emblem of the the very essence of life which compels so many of us to strive to improve this world: happiness.

This of course may be asking for a bit much, especially so quickly after arrival.  Besides, if these experiences were ever as common as we would want them to be, they might not be so memorable.  They might not be so valuable.

In addition, it is because we have the valleys that we have the mountaintops.  The struggle is to embrace both, for the journey is exactly that: a journey.  To find value only while standing among the mountaintops robs oneself of the chance to not only embrace and learn from all the little things that constitute life, but ergo to live the full life.  It is that Ubermensch-like courage, that Socratic acknowledgment of ignorance and willingness to accept the fallacies and misgivings we happen upon in our lives.

Of course, it's never this easy.


Such is the venture of the human mind, and the human kind.


But let me try to bring us back down to Earth.

These have been some trying times.


Confronted with a dearth of immediate things that help sustain me, I have struggled to gain equal-footing on this rocky landscape.  My greatest challenge has been the very duty I have been assigned: teaching.  With as much teaching experience as a 5-year old would have working as a paramedic, I have been battling to simultaneously gain confidence in teaching and display this very "confidence" to my students.  What irony, then, that one must demonstrate the very thing he does not yet have!  When inexperience is rooted deeply within, the branches of insecurity and doubt plague the conscientious mind and destroy the sediment that feeds it.  These inner demons cripple the soul and person, the profession and the students, and all those involved. 



So the fight is to uproot this beast through trial and error, failure after failure, and a quixotic relentlessness.  The holy war is waged within, to purge the incompetence through an ironically less-than-conscientious, almost primal brutality and thoughtless obstinacy, an unending test of endurance and stamina through which you simply cannot give up.  


On Friday, that stereotypically rebellious student who comes from a broken home tested me so much that I dragged him to the disciplinarian's office.  Ten minutes later I received an apology from him as he searched for both words and air amidst streams of tears.

Yesterday in class I made all the students in class do the wall-sit and count to 100 for being so out of line and hence disrespecting not only my time, but that of others as well, especially the students who were trying.  I yelled simply, "Do you think this is fun for me?  HUH?!"  I did exactly that which an English teacher adjured me not to do not half-an-hour ago: teach with emotion. 


So where can I point the finger?  To me?  To the students?  To the school, or education system?

Of course the standard answer would be, "a little bit of everything."  My incompetence compel me to put the blame on myself, for had I prepared a better lesson and provided the students a better learning environment, such drastic measures might never have occurred.  I also am gaining awareness of the image I may be putting forth to many of the students: a gratuitously draconian teacher who is trying to cover for his inexperience and inabilities through unfair treatment of the students.


Or maybe they just think I'm a jerk.


The students aren't stupid, and now I wonder to what extent I should try to rectify this image, if at all.  For the head English teacher has reported back to me that from what he has heard, the students are overall scared of me and that I have been able to take control of the class better than some of the past conversational teachers they've had.



But I can tell I'm thinking too much now.


My brother--also a high school teacher--sent me the following:

This is my desktop background now, for it recalls a kind of banner of iron-clad strength a sports team might harbor (the picture is from Underarmor, after all), or with which one must carry oneself especially in these tough times.  It gives me courage, and it gives me stability; in the very same way my brother always has.

"Does he cry about how he screwed up and throw a pity party, or learn from it and get better?" -My brother


Perspective.


Of course life is good.  Of course that these should be my quandaries speaks volumes for just how comfortable a life I lead.  Of course things could always be worse.


And I don't write all this for pity.  I of course appreciate and am grateful for the encouragements that may come forth, but please know that this exercise is a means through which I try to draw out some meaning, comfort, and maybe even some strength.  

"If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day.  That's a heck of a day.  You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special." -Jim Valvano 




I feel bad to want to write this since it was used as the anthem of the Civil Rights movement, but as Sam Cooke once sang, a change is gonna come.

More to come.


-Yours Truly