Teenagers and words

Dear everybody living with, in one way or another, teenagers, and every now and then ending up getting frustrated by their behaviour,

may I offer one tiny piece of advice? It comes from once being a teenager, not really remembering anything of the things that must have happened, school and stuff, but remembering every single emotion, feeling, fear and frustration of it. It also comes from working with teenagers and young adults for more than *mumblemumblemumble* years, and also having the privilege to live with such people for, so far, almost ten years.

I may? Thank you. So, here it is:

Give them a few kind words.

Even if their behaviour drives you nuts, say a few kind words before sending them off to school. When they do kind things (which they do, all the time), mention it casually and kindly to show them you've noticed. You do mention when you've noticed them doing the other stuff, don't you? Balance is important, mention the kind things too. If they look nice, let them know. If they give you nice words, smile and be happy.

You'll never regret kind words, and they will carry them with them and the words will act like a shield towards teenage life's general awkardness.

Ok, that's all.

Kind words.

Umbrella - at last!

I may have heard a hundred different versions of this song, and never liked a single one of them. This, however, is too cute to resist:

Congratulations

One of my favourite authors is getting married to one of my favourite artists. It's like a fairytale in so many ways.

Vacillatingly

And again we turn in a new direction. I am not surprised anymore, I'm beginning to realise that this is what is to be expected, but this constant change of direction and pace is making me weary.

Today is the first day of the semester. I should be full of energy, and the plan for the semester should be done. Neither one is as it should be, due to aforementioned vacillation.

*sigh*

Only three more semesters to go. Oh joy!

Invincible

Some times I feel like this:



I like days like that

Nighty night

I like nights. In many ways I prefer nights, I prefer the stillness and the coolness, the peacefulness in the knowledge that around me, society is asleep. The phone will not ring, there's nothing on TV, all is calm, all is dark and any thought can be followed from its beginning to its end.

I think nights make us wiser. I know there's generally more oxygene in the air during nights. The sky is more beautiful at night, and conversations more spiritual and witty.

In some aspects I'm frustrated beyond words by having to go to sleep when night falls, in order to be able to rise with the sun. In other aspects I'm grateful that society is organized in this way.

Thus, the night remains peaceful and empty.

Let's keep it that way.

A slight frustration

I'm writing an essay.

No, I'm not. I should be writing an essay, and I would be writing it right now had my train of thoughts not derailed. Again and again.

Don't get me wrong, I love every single one distracting me, I really do. And I honestly don't mind being distracted either, most of the time. It's just that, well, derailing. It takes a while to get the train back on track.

For me, you see, writing is a process. We may be talking about blog posts, essays or comments to students' essays, the process is essential. It takes a bit of time to get it in motion but once it's rolling things fall into place almost magically. Unless...

I'm not asking to be left alone. I'm not asking for solitude. I'm just telling you that repeated derailing inevitably leads to two things - a slight frustration, and a prolonged process.

Don't take it personal, remember I do love you, and I don't mind you disturbing me, but please stop asking me when I'll be done. Every time you do that you add a few hours to the process.

No more Mrs Nice

It's beginning to dawn on me that this course I'm taking, a course that's really very important for my job, supposed to make me a better teacher and lasting four very long semesters of my life, is not at all what I was hoping for. It's very frustrating.

I love to study and learn, I firmly believe that the day one stops learning is the day one stops living, and I never wish to go there again. It's a cold and hard and lonely place! I love to spend hours, days, weeks and more on discussing things, to turn and twist and toss thoughts around and gain new perspectives and insights.

But I also need to be able to balance this course and my work, which means I really need to know times and places and workloads ahead, to be able to plan. When deadlines move and workloads shift without warning it's not just me that's affected, all my students are too and that... is a bad thing. A really bad thing.

I'm very very proud of my students, you see. They work hard, they grow, they learn, they develop wings and learn to fly, and to be able to help them in that process I can't afford to keep too much focus and energy on keeping track of the unproffessional behaviour of my teachers. I'm also rather protective regarding my students. Therefore I'll need to talk to my teachers about this.

It feels really stupid, but it needs to be done. I need to protect my students from the consequenses of my teachers' unproffessionalism.

2010

So this is 2010? So far it resembles 2009 in many ways, a bit colder but not very different. Last year was a hard year in many aspects for many people and I am still hoping we'll be able to change the course. It would be nice, wouldn't it?