Raise Your Hopeful Voice, You Have A Choice, You've Made It Now

Taking a break from chronicling my crazy adventure through the Balkans to tell you about my first day of teaching high school!

Presentation of the flag

Introducing faculty

In Bulgaria on the first day of classes there is this great ceremony, where students present and raise the countries flag with music and marching and speeches. Some students sing in English which I find very interesting, and others present the faculty. All the students bring their teachers flowers, which was very exciting for me to feel welcomed and included. And when I was walking home at the end of the day parents smiled at me because I was holding a flower, so they knew I was a teacher.

After the ceremony we had a staff meeting, which I understood a lot of but not all, since I am still really a beginner in this language. But the faculty were amazing in reaching out to me. I was the new kid that everyone wanted to sit next to at the traditional after ceremony luncheon. They wanted to discuss politics, and language, and geography. They treat me like some dignitary instead of a 23 year old, visiting, MA student who is here to teach and do research. But they asked me why I wanted to come and teach when my research is in Violent Crime Sociology. I always brush it off saying statistics show that completing high school decreases violent crime so I want to contribute to that decline. But in reality I am getting my life’s dream in so many ways over here.

I understand that there should not be
random dancing in class ;)

This plays into the hardest part for me. When I entered the school with those kids it made me wonder what it would be like to go to a normal high school every day, and participate, and just be so involved as these students are.  I don’t know what that is like. I grew up in a hospital, I don’t hide that fact, but it means that I don’t understand what it is to be a normal student or a normal teenager for that matter. These kids will have normal problems, that only after extensive study in psychology can I even really understand. My life has always been drastically different from there’s and not just because I grew up in America. For me in high school there was the usual desire to fit in, but also the resignation that I wouldn’t. Not when I had to leave all the time to go to acupuncture, or see dozens of doctors and meet with research teams. I didn’t get a normal experience and now I am back in a high school, in a country I’ve never visited, in a language I barely understand and I am here to help guide, inspire, and educate these kids. I’m really hoping that all of my studying and humanity will pay off because I want to be there for them and help them in coping with life.

The HS kids I grew up watching!

Which brings me to part 2: My life long dream.

Feeny!

I always wanted to be a 1^st grade teacher, since I was IN the first grade. So why didn’t I become one you ask? Why when I completed 3 majors, and 4 minors, did I not get a degree in education, which at this point is unnecessary over here? Because I am sick. I have an incurable disease that means I wake up every day in a tremendous amount of pain and vomit a lot, which is my body’s way of relieving the pain. I have migraines that last for days, the types of food I can eat are very limited, I could plan for weeks to do something and then the day of the event my body decides I won’t be moving at all so give up. I was born this way, grew up this way, and battled my body to earn my degree, while being labeled as “disabled.” Being a vegetarian helps, since it turns out my body can’t digest meat, but that can only aid me so much before my body decides it’s going to attack some other part of me. The early morning is when my disease is at it’s worst which of course is when the school day begins. See over here, I go 2 or 3 days a week from either 7:15-1:15 or 1:15-7:15. So the constant change tricks my body into allowing me to, even if just briefly, fulfill my dream of being a teacher. It may be the wrong grades but I still get to teach and impact these students’ lives.

My mom and I were talking about this last night, as I don’t usually bring it up. I made peace with the fact that my body and I are “locked in an epic battle until Judgment Day and trumpets sound” as Barbossa would say in Pirate of the Caribbean. Some days it wins, and others I win and one day I am aware that it will win the final round, but that day is very far off and I intend to be as much of a jerk as possible until then and win tons of rounds! (you see now why I live and breathe existentialism.) But I don’t usually bring up that I can’t be what I wanted to be, I feel guilty saying it because in the end I can be many things, and do things that I know others can’t with ease. So I know I should just be grateful for that, and I mean I am over here living the dream in Bulgaria on a Fulbright, which is basically a 1 in 20 chance! So not a bad life, but still my mom and I were talking about how she didn’t realize I still wanted that life.  She brought up a good point that others have lectured me on before but still it’s worth contemplating: While teaching is a noble profession and one most of my family has sought out (my inspiration) it is still a set life. You teach the same things with little variation year after year with the same schedule and nothing changes. I am someone that can research a massive 100 page paper and write it in a week, get a perfect grade and present it at a conference then be done, just walk away. My doctors once told me my mind worked very fast, and with mostly educating myself growing up and not learning in the same way as the other kids, that I will get bored very easy and need to try multiple topics to stay satisfied. I think that’s one of the things that both annoys my mother about me as well as pleases her. She rarely understands what I am researching, but she enjoys that I always keep is fresh and never stop working. I think she’d just rather I didn’t bring home Encyclopedias about serial killers, or chemistry sets ;)

Never stop growing

When I told her that I am still sad sometimes that I can’t be a first grade teacher she said something that reminded me of Ben Affleck in “Good Will Hunting:” (This is a direct quotation so if you are offended by the language I apologize.)

Will: What do I wanna way outta here for? I'm gonna live here the rest of my fuckin' life. We'll be neighbors, have little kids, take 'em to Little League up at Foley Field.

Chuckie: Look, you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house, watchin' the Patriots games, workin' construction, I'll fuckin' kill ya. That's not a threat, that's a fact, I'll fuckin' kill ya.

Will: What the fuck you talkin' about?

Chuckie: You got somethin' none of us have...

Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I fuckin' owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don't want to?

Chuckie: No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time.

Find beauty in every bridge you must cross

My mom told me that while teaching is a great career, she would consider it settling for me. I want to see the world, I want to be able to take off any day that I get the call that I can finally do relief work in Rwanda, I want to pay homage to the Holocaust and the remarkable people of Denmark in Copenhagen, while researching humanity. I want to do great, and big things that my health used to prohibit me from doing and that I’ve recently begun to achieve. But maybe I wanted to be a teacher for so long because my health held me back from doing these things.  My mom pointed out that I can do so many things that other people can’t, that others would die to do. It’s like Chuckie, I don’t owe it to me, I owe it to anyone who has a dream they can’t fulfill, to use my talents, and my abilities to change the world. Yes, that means giving up my dream of being a teacher full time, but with that I know someone else will take those classes that future me would have taught, so those kids will be fine. But who is going to take on the relief work I want to do? Who is going to set up the programs over here that I want to, to end gender discrimination? Who is going to be willing to die to end the horrible anti-victim rape laws in Pakistan? I don’t owe it to me, I owe it to all my friends, my family, and the people I have yet to meet.

Embracing being different brings peace instead of
resignation

900 years of time and space; I never met anyone
who wasn't important before

So for 10 months I get my dreams, and like Cinderella or Quasimodo, that has to be enough. I get these 10 months to affect change, teach, learn a new language, explore a different country, make new friends, and get what I always wanted. Then I go back to focusing solely on serving the world. 

This is what I told the students I TA'd: 

Walk as if you own the world. But never forget:
You are a child of the universe. You owe it your life, your
knowledge, and your passion.

Tonight's song is "Out There" from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in honor of getting your dreams if only briefly! 

Anna