The lit kids went for ice cream after pizza party in class. And I don't know what it was, maybe it's a group of teachers-to-be sitting together, but I felt compelled to ask, what is one thing you want your students to learn from you? When you graduate from school and are pushed into the world (rather prematurely), you don't remember what you learnt in the textbooks. You never share stories like hey you know what a covalent bond is unless you are in 22 Jump Street. But you always tell stories about the people you encounter and what your teacher did for you. It's so cheesy to say that I'm here because I was inspired by my teacher, because that isn't true. But one thing I remember is having my Geography teacher make a fool of herself with so much confidence that it made us feel ok to be whatever we wanted to be. When you meet a class full of teenagers, you're going to find a load of self-esteem issues, insecurity, self-consciousness. And it's not enough to just tell them that they should be confident, you gotta be it. And when you make a fool of yourself and are completely comfortable with that, you provide the environment for them to make blunders and be okay. I never realised this until the day I asked this question.
I'm always making jokes and being really silly because that's how my teacher made us feel safe. And I always wanted to make others feel safe. That it's okay to not be cool and collected all the time, that you should be able to make fun of yourself, that you shouldn't really bother about embarrassing yourself because we are all equally embarrassing. And I've been this way so long because I'm always around people and I want them to feel okay. But if I really strip everything back, I'm still painfully insecure. And this has just been repackaged as I grew up. I think we all are, in a way. Insecurity might take the form of shyness when you are younger. And when you grow up and are confident, you think that you're over that. But sometimes insecurity just repackages itself into something else. For me, it's my fear of failure. This is why I am so crazy about grades in school. It's not because I want to be better than everyone and make them feel small. It's because good grades mean I have something to work for, and something worth stressing over for, and something that would give me the validation that I am doing something right in my life. Syafiq the wizard always says my standard of what is a bad grade is very high. And I admit that is true. And I feel so awful about it because I know it can make the people around me feel lousy. So I don't really talk about grades so much, and I don't really rejoice or grumble about my grades. I only do so to another friend who feels the same way about school and recently he asked me why do you do this to yourself? When someone you think is in the same boat as you asks you this, you really start to reflect. And I realise this fear of failure reaches out to the relationships I have with people. So when friends drift away I feel so sore and sad. I know everyone feels the same, but I can be paralysed from it and I will spend so many months going over everything wondering what went wrong. And I always feel at fault. And when I disappoint people I look up to, it takes a lot to build myself back up.
So as I was reflecting on all the little sad bits I realise one thing in common. All of these things put me in the centre. That is why I feel so shitty. What I thought was confidence was really ego all along. You know that it is your ego because it's so easily bruised by words, by disappointments, by anything but perfection. I'm in a rut I can't get out of because I don't know what to do when I fail. Maybe this is a good thing, a good training ground for me. Maybe this has been the lesson all along. Wow, how did I even get to this. I was just going to be all teacher-mode and talk about building an environment for kids.
I need failure because I need to learn how to deal with it. I need failure because I need to learn to be humble. I need failure because everyone can teach a kid to be confident, but nobody really teaches them how to fail. There is a right way to fail, and that is by being humble, forgiving others, forgiving yourself, dusting your knees and moving along. Because if you don't know how to fail, you will be stuck for a very very long time and you will stay up at 12 in the morning blogging about it.