Nothing

You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. . . so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.'

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

My first year of teaching I tried out for a play. I was expecting ensemble. I got lead. It was a dream part so I couldn't turn it down, but I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to survive the month and a half left of school and stay on top of rehearsals. It seemed like way too much. All year I'd been tired and worn out and never quite finished with grading. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out.

It was the most productive quarter I've ever had as a teacher.

Assignments were graded and entered on time. Lessons were planned and finished by no later than 4:00. I was able to go to rehearsal every night and give myself over as fully as I could to the show, and enjoy doing so without guilt.

I've thought a lot about that quarter recently. Thought about how often we get distracted from the long term goal by the immediate semi-gratification. I remember one student, for example, who was particularly talented in dance, but, due to a supreme amount of laziness and bad grades, was not allowed to share these talents in the after school dance team. The student let the immediate pleasures of sleeping in class or socializing in the halls interfere with the real love and joy associated with dance.

And then there's the documentary I saw recently about the people who spend hours upon hours on Facebook with their hundreds of "friends".

I think about all the time I spend in "nothing". The time I spend not doing anything bad, or anything good - just drifting through articles in the paper I'm not hugely interested in or watching reruns of television shows or looking through my email for messages to delete. How much of my time is that actually taking? I think some "nothing" time is good for you, but when does it cease to help and start to harm? Do I need a busy schedule to keep me on task or am I good enough to fill my time with good things when left to my own devices?

I'll be honest: that last sentence from Screwtape scares me. What a horrible thing to discover about yourself. To learn that your life has been filled with nothing that gave you real joy. Horrible.

No Room to Contain It

Last year was the year from Hades.

It was the year of non-stop work. It was the year of the illness of death. It was the year of no travel, no theater, no sunlight. It was a year for questioning everything I hold dear, wondering if the path I was taking really, truly was the right path (it was). It was a year of hard won recovery after some rather emotionally abusive relationships. It was a year. of. trial.

(There were some good things too. But, not going to lie, I wouldn't relive it.)

In the back of my mind, the storyteller part of my mind, I knew that if I survived the year with faith and hard work and determination, then sometime it would all pay off. The dearth of theater. The lack of travel. The frustration in feeling so lost with who I was and my place in the universe. So I kept going. Worked hard. Bit the bullet of endless responsibility. Fought for what I believed in and came to new understandings about myself and others. Overcame weaknesses. I left 2011 battle scarred and exhausted, but triumphant.

I knew it would pay off, I just didn't expect it to pay off quite this much.

I don't just have one potential show to be a part of this year - I have at least three. And I know for sure that two of them are going to work out.

I won't be going to England like I wanted to, but I will be going on a fantastic trip to the Southeast - Williamsburg, Charleston, Savannah, and Orlando. It's a part of the country I've always wanted to see but never had the chance. Now's my chance.

I am still busy with school and business running, but business running is paying off (literally and metaphorically) in fantastic ways. Plus, as an added bonus, I get to stay at the same school next year instead of moving schools (again), and I'm ecstatic. I love my school and my coworkers and (nearly all) of my students. And, what's also nice, is they seem to like me too.

I am not perfect, but I am learning to be more accepting of where I am in the world and the path I am on. I am striving to do the right thing. Even if my "right" seems strange compared to the "traditional" path people take, I am confident that the Lord knows what He's doing. I feel, for the first time in a long time, peace with myself.

And, best of all, I will be able to go to the temple. I have dreamed and prayed and begged for that chance for so long, and finally the Lord agreed that now is a good time. As a person who generally prides herself on her skills in hiding emotion, at least when it's of the sappy and personal variety, I am quite sure that every time I think of this particular blessing, my cup overflows again and I feel more gratitude than my eyes can contain. 50 days. 50 days and I will be there. With friends and family that I love.

Life is good, friends. I feel as though I understand just a little bit of what the Lord talks about when he says he will bless us and there will not be room enough to receive it. I find myself so full of gratitude that I almost feel guilty, knowing that there are so many other people in the world to bless who have overcome so much more than just working hard, or people who are still struggling with no end in sight - but I'll take it. I'll take it and enjoy it with every ounce of my soul I can spare so that when another 2011 comes around, I'll be ready to tackle it too.

Be Ye Therefore Perfect

I was up this morning listening to the news when one particular story caught my ear. Today is the first official back to school day for most people across the state, so they had a brief news story on not overbooking your student. Fair enough. There are lots of opportunities in schools and it's a good idea for a student to balance themselves so that they have time to take care of all their responsibilities. I get that.

But then the person they were interviewing said one thing that made me a bit chagrined. She said that it is a myth that every student is exceptionally talented. "Exceptionally talented students are the exception," she said. Instead of trying to expect or encourage exceptional things, we should expose students to a wide variety of activities, she says.

Huh.

First of all - isn't exposing people to a wide variety of activities what often leads to overbooking?

Second: I hate that many parents will listen to this and use it as an excuse for not having their students commit to the tasks they agree to do. I've seen this at every school I've taught at in the last three years - parents model a kind of behavior in their students that encourages partial commitment to any task and end up using church activities as an excuse for that partial commitment.

Third: If said woman belongs to the same church that I do, then a phrase that says "Be ye therefore perfect, even as I (and your Father and Heaven - depending on the location of the quote) am perfect." I'm fairly certain that the idea of perfection could more or less be acquainted with the idea of excellence. In fact, I think they're probably pretty good friends. I seem to remember LDS Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley saying, "Mediocrity will never do, I am capable of something better." But this woman seems to be encouraging parents to expect their son or daughter to be only normal.

Well, that's a load of junk.

I'm not a parent, but I am a teacher. I agree that "exceptionally talented" students are rare, but "exceptionally capable" students are not. So often people use lack of talent as an excuse for mediocrity. But this is not good enough. The LDS church teaches that we are, through following Christ, capable of becoming like God. This life is not a time for us to accept our own mediocrity but for us to learn how "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" ("Ulysses", Tennyson.) So why are we encouraging this in our youth? Why are we satisfied with letting them - or ourselves - be given symbolic trophies for little or no real accomplishment? Gold stars and stickers are all well and good - but if we are to become truly great, then we need to seek for a better world - and that takes focus, hard work, and determination.

It's a Marshmallow World...

In August?

Alright. Story time. I have a very boring job (that officially ends TOMORROW!) that involves me entering information into a computer all day. I talk to no one. I sit in my box and look at a screen all day. You kind of start getting the feeling that eventually you'll hit the right combination of keys on the keyboard and someone will run by and give you some cheese or a Scooby Snack. So I do any number of things to keep myself occupied throughout the day to forget how boring everything is. I munch on almonds and have a kind of routine that I keep-I listen to a movie in the morning on a portable DVD player with the screen down so I don't look like I'm watching instead of working-a movie I know really well helps pass the time rather quickly. I listen to music on my iPod on shuffle so I get a good mix of musicals and classical and more up-beat type stuff, and I listen to books on tape that I know really well (Harry Potter, Ender's Game), so that when I zone out and stop listening I don't get confused when I come back in. I change my music in and out fairly frequently so I don't start listening to the same stuff over and over and over again. So I was getting near the end of listening to Ender's Game and I decided to put Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on just in case I finished. I have all my books on their own playlist in itunes so that I don't have to have it on my iPod all the time-so I suppose you could imagine my surprise when about two hundred Christmas songs from my collection made their way on to my iPod. I was listening to songs on shuffle when all of the sudden I heard "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" by Andy Williams. I was completely confused. What in the-I hadn't added Christmas music! I love Christmas and all, but I don't listen to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving when I start putting up decorations and looking for trees. Shame on me though-I broke my rule and listened to nearly every Christmas song that came through in the shuffle because it was exactly the change I needed and put me in such a good mood that it didn't matter how ridiculous it was. Christmas music makes me so happy. It has a kind of smell to it-a sound and feel associated with every Christmas memory I've ever had. Like picking out the tree with my mom and driving around to look at lights-caroling in full Dickens-dress with the cast of the Hale's version of A Christmas Carol...walking home in the snow from work when it's just me and the street lights and feeling all romantic about it until I get home and realize my mascara's run and I look like a raccoon instead of the snow-queen I've imagined for myself. All the Californians who come to Provo in the winter can back off as far as I'm concerned. I love winter and I can't wait for snow.

I wish...

I had more free time. Have you ever said that? I know I have. On this board, actually.

Today (once again in my Brit Lit class), we took a break from 17th century lit to discuss what it is, exactly, that a good education should consist of. We talked about class sizes, and about how we shouldn't have one specific major but be able to focus on lots of different things and see the connections, and lots of other things that make me want to go to Oxford (though I never thought I'd say that). Then someone mentioned the importance of free time, and we got into a fairly interesting discussion that I thought I'd write about here for my topic of the day.

First of all-America is a work-a-holic nation. There's a phrase we use here that says we are "working like dogs". Well, in all of Europe, they say "working like an American". We are work obsessed. Most of our education is geared towards getting a job. Going to school isn't a luxury any more-it's almost a necessity in American society if you intend to make money. And there is some merit to that-but think about this:

In Europe, (England in particular, for the point of my discussion), workers are only allowed to work a certain amount of hours/drive a certain amount of kilometers/whatever their job requires. It's limited. And if a manager thinks they are working too hard, they can send them home. They have required vacation days. American's are always wishing for free time but, honestly-what do we do with our free time? Most of us are so work obsessed that when we get free time we don't know what to do with it. Rather than take time off from work to learn something, or go to a museum, or experience life in some way, we sit around at home and wait for ...whatever we're waiting for.

There was a study done in Europe of couples that were filing for divorce a while ago. These were couples who weren't just thinking about divorce, they were set on it. They had filed the papers and were ready to call it quits when the governments of these countries kind of pooled together in a study of divorcing couples. They offered to pay them if they would help with an experiment for six months. The first third of the people were put through traditional marriage counseling-and about 20% decided not to get divorced. Another third was given money to cover any financial struggles they were having, and a little more than 20% of that group decided not to go through with the divorce. The last third-and this is crazy- were paid to spend time together for six months. They had to be with each other on paid leave of work and everything else for six months. 96% of those couples decided not to get divorced. Just because of time.

So now I've started thinking-I'm always complaining that I don't have enough time in the day. I spend all day trying to get through class, and work, and rehearsal, and homework, and I talk about how there aren't enough hours in the day, and my roommates do it too, but what if we're spending more time doing homework, for example (I can't exactly cut back on work hours or class hours), because we don't take time to do something to enrich our minds away from schoolwork. Something besides sleeping (though that can also help).

I've started a list. I have books I want to read, things I want to do, movies I want to see, poems I'd like to write-I even (get this, Liz), have considered going online and finding a bunch of math problems to solve just for the sake of doing something with my time that can be more beneficial to me in the long run.

I'll get back to you on how it goes-but I'll bet something good comes of it. Because education shouldn't be divided into subjects that never touch each other. Education should be about finding connections between things you never thought possible. Subjects that aren't divided into water-tight bulkheads (see Dorothy Sayers' article The Lost Tools of Learning, available online), but should be like a river, moving forwards and mixing together into something that feeds the land around it.