On Learning Curves

What do you do when many aspects of your life involve a steep learning curve? Do you greet each one calmly and start rock climbing up the side? Do you cling to the things you know that you know? Thinks to self, "wow, I'm really bad at _____, so I'm going to focus on how good I am at ____." Or, do you succumb to sheer overwhelmed-ness and drown for a bit, resurfacing when some time has passed and progress has been made?

I've faced situations like this before. As a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Uganda, I'm pretty sure I always felt overwhelmed and 'behind.' I was so sure of not knowing anything that it became part of my story for those two years. As a brand-new teacher living in Laos, I was more able to absorb the challenges and learning curves, probably because I had met such a supportive soul-friend. Looking back on those first few weeks of full-time teaching, though, I remember feeling totally lost at sea. I drowned in the sheer overwhelming-ness of it for awhile until I started to figure out the short-cuts to teachingand regain a sense of groundedness.

I'm enmeshed in yet another situation where my life, from every angle, appears to be a craggy mountain that I have to climb. On a personal level, there are peaks of loneliness to get over as I survey my surroundings and figure out which humans I can connect with. There are long, dry valleys composed of, "what the hell do I eat today?" and, "What the hell does that text/word/menu item/message/utterance/social cue" mean?" or "How do I work out when the air quality is comparable to smoking cigars in a coal mine?" Some days, as I walk around campus, I feel like some awkward, flapping bird that no one looks at but everyone is acutely aware of. At the moment, I can't figure out any of my technology; all my devices are conspiring against me and churning out political coups left and right.

From a professional angle, I'm somewhere in the Himalayas. There's all these mini-Everests popping up around me: I've never taught college-level courses before, I've never taught in China before, I actually haven't taught full-time for several years. I look around at the other fellows in China and sometimes all I can see are their years of experience teaching in universities, their extensive time abroad in China, and their language skills. It's hard to not feel alone, like the altitude sickness is my fault, like I'm already in the red for Oxygen.

I met with four other Americans today who are all teaching in some capacity at HUST, my university. They are all warm and energetic. Several of them are just out of college and freshly-moved to China, yet seem filled with confidence. When I asked a man who teaches literature in my department about how he deals with varying student expectations and the blank stares and silence frequently experienced during the first few weeks of teaching, he replied, "With boundless self-regard." I'm struck by the fresh simplicity of this outlook and how often I complicate my challenges by cross-hatching them with multiple shades of doubt, second-guessing, and reflection. I forget to approach many of my challenges with a simple self-regard.

On the other hand, this has really never been my style. I'm not a, "this is the way things are," sort of person, and this is echoed in how I approach learning curves or challenging situations. As an example, I really don't expect my students to buck up and adjust to my teaching style; for better or for worse, I expect myself to do the lion's share of the adjusting.

In all of my worrying, I forget that everyone else around me is facing their own forms of learning curves. I have a dear friend back home who has a much more difficult situation; while I am adjusting to life in China, she is busy adjusting to the sudden illness of her brother, which she does with amazing self-confidence and thoughtfulness. Another dear friend, who is facing her own learning curve as she shifts from teaching abroad to teaching in the US, helpfully reminded me that no one knows what they are doing. As humans we are always dealing with unforeseen challenges and new situations; we are often called upon to do or say things that we aren't ready to do or say. And, our self-worth doesn't hinge on our ability to 'perform well', or our talent at bouldering our way confidently up the learning curves we encounter. Even if I approach my new life with a certain degree of anxiety or overwhelmed-ness, in reality, my self-worth comes from a more global knowledge of myself---not just how I respond to stressful situations. I am much more than that anxiety. And, my self-regard, although not keenly-felt in these first few weeks adjusting to life in China, is still very much intact and alive. Its able to be expressed in subtler, quieter moments, and is hugely reinforced anytime that I talk to a friend or family member.

I've always felt confused about why my expression of self-confidence looks so different from others. I turn this confusion into a story that I tell myself, the moral always being, "Buck up" or "Be more confident." I experiment with speaking more loudly, using certain postures, intensifying my eye contact. We all perform and exhibit self-regard in different ways. I'm coming to terms with the reality that my gentleness is as much part of me as my eye color, that much of my strength swells from that softness. Expecting myself to be able to 'grab life by the balls' as I live through this new experience is like asking motorists to yield to pedestrians in Wuhan; it just doesn't make sense. I'm a gentle fumbler, the kind of person who is constantly dropping her money in supermarkets as people wait behind her, and that's okay. Don't get me wrong- I like a nice "Carpe Diem!" outlook, but I skew more towards Mr. Rogers than Mark Zuckerberg in the following spectrum:

Carpe Diem Spectrum:

Mr. Rogers|---X----------------------------------------|Mark Zuckerberg

If seizing the day means gently creating positive change through puppetry, then count me in!




And, now for some adorable, delicious, and strange pictures:

Chen embracing and contemplating my plump fox stuffed-animal:

 The special noodle dish of Wuhan: Reganmian, which is hot, peanuty, sesamey, dry noodles. It gives you the only kind of dry mouth that I can really recommend!

 Awesome savory pancake making:

 Chen contemplating Rice Crepes, a type of cantonese dumpling, that I shortly thereafter made a tremendous mess out of by trying to eat with chopsticks:

 My hand moving eating delicious savory pancake closer to my face:

 A mysterious picture of nearly my entire leg that I found. In this photo, I am mid-step. You can also see my chaco foot tanline:

 This is a gigantic mandala hanging above my bed. This is something that only truly spiritual people do, so you can all come to me for spiritual questions now:

 This is what one of our school gates looks like. Otherwise, it's a pretty unremarkable picture:

 This was right after I almost got hosed down by a gigantic water truck that sprays the ground to make it wet, I guess:

Love you!

Ils