Sometimes I just fail

That's what I decided today.  But for some reason I feel like I'm supposed to be good at everything that I do and to never give up at anything.

I did some tutoring online yesterday, and it just was awful.  It was partly because the online classroom stopped working properly during one session, a student disappeared in the middle of another, and I was helping a calculus student who still didn't know how subtract fractions with different denominators in another (admittedly, the denominators had variables in them, but still!).  All in all, the communication through typing was slow and painful, and drawing on the whiteboard with my mouse was sloppy and tedious.  I felt like nobody had any clue what I was saying, and I was struggling to be more clear as I was unable to point at something and talk simultaneously.  At the end of two and a half hours, I just felt horrible and like I had helped absolutely nobody.

I went to sleep last night still stressed out, and I woke up with this feeling of dread because I had another hour of tutoring scheduled for today.  I finally just burst into tears as I was bringing in the laundry from the line.

That fact is, I felt like a failure.  And at something I am 'supposed' to be good at!

After crying at Matthew for awhile and letting him know how horrible and pathetic of a person I am, I decided once and for all to quit tutoring online.  It has just made me become extremely stressed out and feel like an inadequate human being.  And why should I do this if it makes me a completely miserable human being?

Yet, I feel like I have failed (or just hated) just about every job I've had.  My boss horrified me when I was a lifeguard, plus it was fairly boring staring at a pool for eight hours at a time.  As a busser, I felt like I could never go fast enough, and one of the managers made me want to die when she hissed, "We serve ice water here," at me after I failed to get an ice cube from the pitcher into the glass at one table.  I was kind of bad at getting enough ice to go into the glasses without splashing water everywhere, so I tended to be cautious and I sometimes didn't get ice into the glass.  I enjoyed landscaping at OSU except for the fact that half of the days I felt like I was going to die from heatstroke.  That was my first summer away from the always-60-degrees Oregon coast.  My next summer I learned that I didn't enjoy wrestling with MATLAB daily.  That following year, I did my student teaching and woke up daily feeling like I was going to throw up.  That summer, I started tutoring some rising 5th graders which was way outside of my comfort zone as a human being who had been trained to work with high school students as who grew up managing to mostly avoid dealing with children (not intentionally... I just never had much of an opportunity.)

However, I quickly figured out how to tutor those kids adequately, and I have been with them for three summers now, and I'm really loving it this summer.  I also started as a teaching assistant at OSU in the fall, and while I was nervous for the few classes, I quickly learned to be confident and happy, and most of my students really liked me.

So I'm not a complete failure!  I just feel really bad about how badly I've done at so many things...  I feel dread when I consider doing most jobs.  I hate the idea of working a full-time job.  I feel like either private tutoring or teaching part-time at a community college might be the only places I could work without living with constant panic and adrenaline surges.

This makes me feel kind of bad at this point in life though.  I feel kind of like there's a lot of pressure to work a bunch.  But I don't really want to, and Matthew wants to, so what's wrong with that?

It's not that I'm lazy either.  I promise I'm not.  I like staying busy, and I enjoy cooking, cleaning (although I'm not a huge fan of doing dishes for some reason, I'm not going to lie), and doing other jobs.  I also have never minded volunteering.  For some reason, doing the same job while volunteering makes me feel less stressed out.  I feel like fewer eyes are on me and I'm being judged less.  My last term in college, I volunteered in one classroom where I had done student teaching, and I was happy as a clam doing that.

I just feel weird when I realize that my aspirations for life are to cook, clean, grow a garden, make things, raise kids, and volunteer.  Not that I think that those are bad aspirations.  I just feel like people don't really respect them.  I think that's why I tell people that my goal is to teach community college or tutor when they ask.  I think I do want to do these things, but they're not really my greatest aspirations.  When you've gotten a Master's degree in mathematics, it just is hard to expect good reactions from people when you say you want to be a "housewife" or "stay-at-home mom".

This makes me think about my brother.  I think he's right when he talks about how our education shouldn't be thought of as just a means to an end where the end is a career.  My education has changed how I think, how I understand and view people, and really my life in general.  I have no regrets about the six-years of hard work, tears, confusion, and challenges that I faced at OSU.  Even if I barely use the particular bits of information that I have gleaned, the changes in my brain will stay with me.

So there you have it.  I kind of suck at jobs.  However, I bake a mean loaf of bread, I keep a home clean, warm and cozy feeling, I love to make things grow, and I like picking my food and "putting it up".  I look forward to pouring my life into my kids when I have some someday (hopefully not too many years from now), and as I pour, I will be sharing my six-years of college experience through how and what I teach my children.

I apologize if my recent posts have seemed different and less appealing to some of you!  I feel like a lot of my blog has been created as we move forward in life, and as we spend this time waiting for our next assignment in life, it has been more challenging to move forward because some things may have to change based on where we live next.  However, I think this time has been good for me as I learn about myself, figure out what's important to me, and learn to wait patiently (or at least try/pretend).  I'm sure we'll be moving forward in the next few years as we learn what it really looks like to not be in college, hold a job, have kids (hopefully), etc.  And hopefully that forward motion will start soon. :)