No.  I’m not bipolar.  But I am happier in the last few days.

Not bipolar, but creative, and so I swing from black to bright by nature, with all shades of grey and beige in between.  Can I put my finger on the current happy?  Because, seriously, nothings changed at work. 

I guess it’s the business of separating myself from the nonsense, being less emotionally involved in it.  Letting it go and saying "I can only do what I can do, so I’ll do that well… and for now I’m letting God take care of the rest."  It certainly rests easier in my soul to be less angry, and I’ll speak up when I believe I’ll get heard but in the meantime it’s ‘cover my ass and get on with the job’…  we’ll see how it goes…

I told you I’m tutoring/lecturing at college right?  Actually that’s one of the things at the office that’s keeping me sane… I LOVE it.  Part of the love is having the respect of my students, I’ve earned it in the last few weeks, putting the time in, giving them the info they need, doing my homework, and because of that they keep showing up to class, and furthermore they actually listened when I flat out gave them the hard word on Thursday.

You know what, I think that’s a big part of the happy.  The teaching I’m doing.  And the reason it makes me so happy is that I’m respected, by both the students and the faculty of actually having something valuable to offer.  It may be that the wider organisation considers me valuable, but the vibe I’ve been getting is that I’m completely invisible, whether they mean to give that vibe off or not.  (So thanks PIA for the gig, it means more than you knew!)

Anyway, on Thursday I’ve got 5 kids sitting round the table (ok, so they’re not kids really… but I am old enough to be a parent to at least 3 of them…) and we’re talking about assignments, and college and effort and I realised I could really make a difference, so I told them things some real truths and hard things along the lines of…

"You may well be marking time doing this degree just to get a piece of paper, skating through the assignments on ability, but why not make the most of HAVING to be here by improving the quality of the degree you get, you’ll get a whole lot more out of your time and you’ll be a much better employee at the other end…"

"Slow down, read it to me again, no.  Slow.Down.  What’s the question they’re asking of you.  No, I won’t give you the answer, slow down, you can do this, read it again.  What’s the question?  YES! RIGHT… see?  You can do this if you just SLOW.DOWN!"

"it’s true, things may not be as orgnaised or as structured as you’d like.  Seriously, but the only thing you have the power to change is how you react.  You’re a degree student, not at school any more… the information you need is available you just have to work harder to get it.  And if you’re not finding it, ask!  But watch how you ask, because if you go to the Dean angry and combative they’ll only react to your demeanour… go humble, you’ll get a lot further… (anyone see where I learned this???)"

The cool thing was that in the last situation the Dean came to me and told me of the dramatic change in that particular student’s manner when he came looking for his answers the next day… talk about having an impact!

The truth is, in this studying lark I’m not there to blow smoke and tell them they’re fabulous.  The ARE but I think because the part of a wider group who aren’t doing the degree program, even as degree students they hold back and operate at VET level (vocational education and training) like their peers… Not good enough for me… no sir!  It felt really good to be listened to, to be respected and today I’ll be marking their first lot of assignments.  Next week I’ll be marking the ones that came AFTER the chastening… I’m looking foward to seeing if there’s a difference.

So, yeah, I think that’s the root of the problem.  I’m dealing with a whole bunch of people who want stuff from me and are prepared, all the time, to go over my head to get it.  They have no interest in my experience or expertise, nor any trust that I even have experience or expertise in my field and so I feel like I’m caught as an uncool, unhip oldster between a whole generation of kids who think they know better and a bunch of boomers who appear to feel the need that, for whatever reason, they ought to give the kids everything they want.  So there I am, keeping the status quo in some areas, yielding repeatedly in others against my better judgement ,and all the time feeling as though I’m a tool for empowering unnecessary expense and decadence, all for the sake of an aesthetic with very little substance.

Talk about invisible.

THIS is why Thursday was so powerful.  The students are no less Gen Y than any of the others I’m talking about, but because I have their respect they actually listened to me and it did some good, probably even more good for me than them.

Too bad I only have them 1 hour a week…

Someone called me Jesus today.  Can’t begin to imagine how hard HE laughed at that… a roll on the floor laughing His ass off kind of situation I think… (yes so! Jesus has an ass – he rode into Jerusalem on it… geez.)  I mean me… as the salvation of the world.  I’M rolling on the floor laughing my own ass off …

The salvation really only extended in this case, to a group of 6 individuals, the context was a college tutorial.

It happens that I’ve been seconded, by virtue of my proximity and my distinction average to tutor a class in Creativity and the Imagination; seems like they need a linear thinker like me to make sense of the course material and by extension the essay questions which are written and delivered by a particularly creative individual… Don’t get me wrong the material’s great… just hard to qualify and quantify… (which is where I come in)

Anyway, both last week and this found me going through required reading, trying to make sense of it myself and learning about, and imparting the meaning and practice of autoethnography to a bunch of 2nd years… They’re seeing the light at the end of the essay question and calling me Jesus…

Futhermore it seems like a disctinction average has the potential get my halo all shinied up for the faculty as well – as there’s the potential that I’ll be getting another tutelage gig next semester too which in the scales of ‘Should I Stay, or Should I Go’ (which I teeter on constantly) causes the weight to lean towards staying…

Which, quite frankly sucks.  To leave is to give up some very good things, like tutoring and my mac.  To stay is to continue to navigate the waters of change, change that isn’t necessarily done well and which is discombobulating.

Me – Jesus! … discombobulated.

I think I’ll leave the salvation stuff up to Him.

Heark back if you will to January 2006.  I put to the blogosphere the prospect of my going back to do a couple of years of part-time study in order to upgrade my Adv Dip in Christian Ministry to a Bachelor of Theology.  Today marked the end of that particular journey.  Man, 2 years never went so fast…

I’m  pretty satisfied with my results, 2 credits, 4 distinctions and 2 high distinctions with an average of 80%, and I’m really pleased to have achieved the work required and say I’ve done my degree but I have to confess I thought I’d be more excited…

 

Ok, maybe I look pretty excited… 

I can’t put my finger on it… but I can see myself sitting in the Grand Hall of The University of Sydney today surrounded by gorgeous sandstone and stained glass wearing the traditional garb alongside my fellow graduands listening to soaring organ music and a beautiful choir and it all just seemed a bit daft really… a case of people taking themselves waaaay too seriously.  I mean, have you really looked at the guys up on the podium?  Don’t they make you want to laugh out loud?  Or wouldn’t it be really funny to deflate a whooppee cushion at a really quiet moment just to make the place giggle (after the collective gasp of horror…)!?

The Grand Hall, University of Sydney

Maybe I’m just too egalitarian to think that a degree puts one person ahead of another…  Maybe I’m less interested in the outcome than the process of learning… and maybe my ambivalence is making you wonder why I bothered in the first place.

I bothered at all because a) because I could, b) because if I didn’t I would have gone out of my tree LONG ago out of sheer boredom, c) because having now got a degree I’m eligible to pass on some that knowledge to others as a tutor and d) because I can go on to further study in some other areas I’m interested in, and maybe even at such exalted palaces as The University of Sydney rather than a Divinity College.

I’m under a bit of pressure from PIA to do my Masters.  I scoff at the prospect most of the time but I’m actually not opposed to the idea… however, should I actually decide to do it…  I won’t be doing Theological Study – I’ve given God enough grief…

…and I don’t want to push him over the edge to a heart attack…

 

That marathon assignment, that major work of all major works that took me OMG too many sleepless nights and days of mucus to finish, came back to me today.
With a stamp of 89%. That’s a High Enough distinction in my book.
Yay.
Totally worth the effort even if I was a little verbose… when you work that hard you really could care less that those extra 600 words cost you marks. Especially when the marks are that good.
That’s one point off 90%.
I am v pleased… can you tell?