Momentum

Daily, I experience more fallouts with humans that I once associated myself with. I used to think that there was something wrong with me, that I was the problem in these fallouts and that I deserved no better.

Upon reflection, I no longer see it that way. Upon reflection, I have began to notice that I have evolved so much mentally, that sometimes I cannot recognize myself. Sometimes, I surprise myself in the way that I speak and in the thought processes that I undertake to the extent where I cannot keep up, thus I do not expect anybody else to. I used to substitute my 'big words' for words that are much simpler to comprehend, and I lost essence in conversation. 

And that there is the problem, I think. Most of the time, whenever I share my ideas, people demean them and deem me 'weird' or 'strange'. That is to say, though, I have been fortunate enough to meet people who do not think that they are all that odd, thus my academic flourishing. But outside of the realm of academia, it is a cold and barren place. It is a place that is intellectually scarce, a place where the pedagogical journeyers have no resting place, nor have they a mere welcome mat. 

I remember distinctly a time when I was around eighteen. I had just finished high school, and I had sought a writing course that would suck me in, spin me around and throw me back out. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I was not prepared to search within my souls for words that would resonate with others, or so I thought. 

To apply, I had to show excerpts of my writing just to show my cognitive calibre. I searched through my laptop and gathered typings that I had created at different points in time, typings that I had never gone ahead with. Among the pile sat my favorite, one that was initiated out of no place at all and that focussed primarily on my study of human behaviour. I did not know that I would need this so much later in life, that the table of contents I had devised for it summarised most of what I would experience. I did not know that the table of contents was not enough. Had I continued to write that book, I think I would have gotten far.

But the truth is that I am passively adding to that book daily. I am finding new things about myself, my psyche, that even Freud would not understand, and things about others. I find that my observations are never over because there are so many different people that I have come to meet, know or know about. There are so many chemicals inside the human that mix together and toggle different things, and I think that as a pre-service teacher, I am fortunate to have come to terms with some of these chemicals. There are people all over the world experiencing the things I am experiencing, and sometimes I need to remind myself that this is so.

But the momentum that my mind is undertaking travels at speeds so rapid that sometimes I do not stop and observe my observations, and that is when I forget about the behaviours I already know, and in that forgetting I forget about the natural reactions that I deal with, and I thus put myself down. But I am slowly gaining control of that momentum, even if most of the people I meet cannot even begin to grasp the concept. I too consider myself outer-worldly, and I am beginning to embrace it.

My momentum is nothing that I should fear, nor is it something others should. I may not come with all of the prerequisites needed to thrive in my generation, but I am prepared when it comes to intellectual straining and I am equipped with tonnes of creative artillery. I will not stand around and wait for allies.  

Divergent

I amuse myself sometimes. Actually, I amuse myself all the time. I also amuse all sorts of people. But more than being amusing, I also am confusing in terms of my divergent nature, how I fall into several descriptors that differ from initial thoughts of me.

The main descriptor that amuses me and confuses others is the fact that I have decided to embark on an educative journey. It is something that most everyone I meet does not expect. In fact, the last thing they would expect me to be on the journey towards being is a teacher, a role model, an educator. The way I talk, the way I behave and the things that I do scream otherwise and it makes it difficult for people to believe me when I claim that my area of interest lies in the world of academia, of learning to learn to teach.

People simply cannot fathom that a person like me who speaks more street-talk than not will be the director of a classroom one day. They then begin to fit the pieces together when I consistently begin to drop words that are too large for them to comprehend, and soon come to the acceptance of the fact that I may lecture their sons and daughters in the near future. And that is what I certainly love most about myself, the fact that I am not who I appear to be. This can go brutally awful, though.

Not in favour of this amusement is the parents of these little people. If a parent saw me at a party, or at the shopping centre or anywhere else I journey through, they will consider me the last person that they would ever want near their child, let alone the last person they want instructing their child. I have befuddled the parents of the students that I work with, though, on my placement rounds. One particular mother became more obsessed with me than her daughter was. I remember sitting at the back of the car on our way home from an abandoned mental asylum and my cousin turned around and asked me, "why is there an Indian lady smiling at you and waving?" It turned out it was her. Her daughter was asleep in the back of her car, so her mother decided to do all of the waving. I rolled down the window and had a miniature conversation with her across two lanes on a main road - it was fantastic!

My mentor teachers also judge me upon my appearance and my quiet nature and my "unwillingness to show initiative". I soon also amuse them when I start teaching, and I have had several occasions where some of my mentors have become jealous of my bond with the students, particularly one from primary school. I cannot help it. I will not compromise my ability to connect with students immediately so as to not make my mentors look bad. I am there to gain experience and I will "show initiative" in my own ways. 

And that is what teaching is all about, in my opinion. Being divergent. I could not care what the educator of my children will look like, smell like nor would I care that they enjoy listening to rap music and swearing a little too much in each sentence that they say. What I care about is their ability to connect with my child so as to allow my child to confide with them on an educative basis. And that is who I am for children that I teach. Parents need to judge based on practice not on physical presentation. 

The IT Guy

I witnessed something rather strange today. It was strange in the sense that the IT guy who came into our lecture, somewhere in its middle, was an alien to every other student in the lecture theatre except for me. I actually knew this boy. And I say 'boy' with intent.

A couple of years ago, not knowing which path to head on in my life in terms of career possibilities, my father recommended that I tried out an Advanced Diploma in Information Technology. I was a digital native, the computer was my oyster and I had nothing else, nothing to lose either because all the course would cost me was two-hundred dollars, which my mother offered to pay, so I figured, why not?

And so I applied for the course, was accepted, and enrolled. The first day was pretty great because the class was divided almost equally, in terms of gender. I felt comfortable. The week went by and the numbers of females began to drop dramatically. Soon, after three or so weeks, I was the only female left in a class of around sixteen males. During computer tests, they would email me the codes. I remember distinctly when we were asked to create a pizza ordering system under test conditions and an email was sent around from computer to computer, we were more intelligent in that than at anything else.

I passed with flying colours. Project management was easy. Programming was easy with a little help from the boys. Web design was the best and most memorable because I created a serial killer website offering links to supplies that they would need, general things like top quality chainsaws, axes, rope and gloves. It sure as hell scared my teacher, and every boy never looked at e the same again - clearly, I was not a girl to mess with, nor talk to. They dared not get on my bad side.

During lunchbreaks we would hack into the computers outside of the classroom, the ones accessed by all students, and zoom the screens in so much so that the login page was utterly unaccessible. We would then reserve around three computers which we left alone and used to play Counter Strike together. I soon learned to shoot really well and it became a ritualistic happening. It seemed like we would be playing Counter Strike forever, with no worries in mind.

Soon enough, Networking class came along. And naturally, I was the only one who struggled. Nobody managed to help me in this class because our teacher caught on quite quickly that people were prone to helping me. I was on my own, and having not known a thing about 'pinging' or connecting computers to invisible platforms called 'servers', I failed that class alone and never turned up again. I had passed every other class perfectly, and this class was no exception. I was no match for CISCO and had I not had a sexist teacher, I would have been, for 'help' was not a word in his elaborative dictionary filled with nerdy terms. 

Looking back on those days, there were three boys who stood out from the rest, three boys who thought they were better than everyone else, the 'alpha-males' of the computer world. I remember two of their names, Andrew and Goldie. The third I cannot remember, though I do remember he played soccer games when he was meant to be paying attention, yet managed to pass everything. The trio would not associate themselves with the rest of the class, and would spend lunchbreaks playing with a soccer ball in the carpark outside of our building.

Andrew was the IT guy today. As I sat there in the lecture, being exposed to pedagogies and creative ways around the school curriculum, I watched him fiddle with mere sound controls, things that I could have done without any diploma. He did the same things over and over - to the inexperienced eye, it looks professional, but I knew better. I shook my head. He then shrugged his shoulders, said he would be back later, and left the room - clearly he was going to Google the problem, or ask for help from his elders.

It is funny where life can lead you, and it is despicable how close-minded people can veer so far away. I bet he did not even remember who I was. Hey, Andrew! I used to sit behind you. I know you own a BMW, do not think highly of yourself because I also know that it belongs to your grandfather. Perhaps pursuing a soccer career would have proved more rewarding. It is nice to see that you have found a pair of pants that do not hang off your ankles and waft around because they are too short.

What Language Are You Speaking?

Most of the time, it seems that anybody that I converse with has no idea about what it is that I am saying. And because of this, most of the time I end up having to filter my words into 'street talk', a type of talk that consists of slang and bodily movements in order to make up for true meanings of words that once were.

I do not talk in complex terms. I just talk in terms that are beckoned to be forgotten by the greater public, because the greater public prefers a sense of simplicity in their speech amongst the complexities of every day life. And because of this, people like me are left to pretend to speak in a manner they absolutely loathe - slang. I am so amorous about America because most of the words I have heard coming from American tongue are words that are not spoken here in Australia on an everyday basis - they are words written by the finest Australian scholars, but rarely ever uttered. And that is what irritates me about having to converse with most people. It is the fact that I can converse better when I write because at least the people who read my writing have some form of interest in it, whereas when I speak people have to voluntarily focus that one extra bit, and it is forcibly done so because I can tell that they still have no idea about what I am saying.

I am tired of condensing my speech. I often sit alone in my study and release these words verbally and ravel in them with utter delight, I marvel at the words that I release because I never knew I was capable, but that is because all of this time I have been hiding them from other people, I have also been hiding them from myself. A piece of myself, a big piece of my inner self cannot be contained any more than it already is, yet most of the time I have no option but to leave it that way. My other bodily functions, like my tear ducts, begin to take over sometimes. They too speak words of their own, words that are afraid to come out. But like me talking to myself in the study, they too cannot be contained any longer.

It is a barren world for people with a constantly working intellect. It is cold, and barren, and there is no warmth. I have to make my own warmth, and I do this by writing, reading and drawing. They are the three things that I have that allow me to be myself, and allow me to thrive in a world where I am just me and not the me that everyone else wants me to be. When I am about to lose myself, I turn to these three worlds and they remind me that I am something, that my self worth should not go a day without being mentioned.

I can recall a day earlier this week when I was in the car with two people and they could not believe that I had written eighty-eight consecutive essays in the duration of my holidays. They could not fathom why I would even bother to write, and they could not understand my explanation of my first year thesis piece, about pedagogical third spaces, even when I placed the terms simply. So I dropped all talk of this and I continued on with their bothersome slang language. And they felt comfortable again, and my discomfort continued alongside their comfort. And that is the way that it is with me, my life, and my inner self. That is the way it always will be, I am afraid, because I am yet to be proven otherwise.

I am yearning to find that one build of complexities who can see through my slang and see my own complexities, who will allow our complexities to mingle and therefore enjoy my true company. But I suppose, just like a decent friend, it is too much to ask for.