OK day, BAD night

I woke up without the aid of the alarm at 6:30 this morning (OK, technically yesterday morning now, but I consider it the 21st until I've gone to bed for the night). I slogged away at the promotion application--and I am very glad I decided to cancel classes, as it's going to take a huge amount of time. I have to dig back through minutes of committees since fall 2006 to remember what I did that is worth noting--and that's for five departmental committees (I don't think I'm forgetting any) and three college-wide committees. Then I have to write it up so it A) sounds impressive and B) is not repetitive. Of course the other problem is I wasn't always careful about where or whether I saved the minutes, so sometimes it takes me a while to find what I need--or to realize I truly don't have it and will have to rely on someone else's institutional memory for the information. I realize, too, I get compulsive about the process. I kept thinking, "Let me just do this one more thing..." until suddenly I realized it was 3:30 and I'd been working since about 9:30 and hadn't had lunch and had needed to be in the shower by 3 to get to campus when I had intended to.

I did get there on time for Sara's presentation, which was the key thing--and I even had enough time to take care of copying the rubric sheets I had the "Oh shit" moment about yesterday, as well as tying off a few other little loose ends. Sara's talk was fascinating. We didn't let her present as she will at the conference she's preparing for: we kept interrupting with comments and questions and responses to each other's comments and questions. But since hers is still a work in progress, I hope that was helpful to her rather than keeping her from being able to maintain a train of thought. I had one of those "I'm smart after all!" moments, when I made a connection and one of the other members of the audience said, "That's good, Tonia." It was like getting a gold star in kindergarten. I really was ridiculously gratified by just that little acknowledgment that I still can think.

So, as a reward to myself, I went to take a dance class (social dance) at a studio I stumbled across on Saturday. I took social dance classes two summers ago and adored them until the instructor left (and his replacement was an idiot). It's been one of those things in the back of my mind since that I'd like to do as a treat for myself, so tonight, I went. I thought class started at 8:15, but tonight's lesson started at 9, so I ate dinner (which I needed) at a little Chinese place nearby. When I got back to the studio, I was particularly glad to see that there were (miraculously) sufficient male partners for all the women in the class. Then the lesson began--and that's when things started to go bad.

The other students had been working on a particular combination of steps for the last three weeks, and there was very little acknowledgment of the fact that I was brand new to it all and even less in the way of specific help. I know the instructors had to teach to the majority of the class, not the one clue-free student, but it would have been nice if the woman had taken over partnering some of the male students and the man had given me a little one-on-one assistance to help me get caught up. Lacking that, I kept turning the wrong way and getting tangled up--couldn't keep things straight enough even just to follow my partners' lead. I've tried leading in classes where there weren't enough men, and it's hard, because the guy always has to be thinking about a half a beat ahead so he can give the woman the right signal at the right time. All the woman really needs to do is keep her feet going in the appropriate pattern and go wherever the guys says. But that is all based on the presumption that the woman has the appropriate pattern well enough in her feet not to lose it when suddenly she is being spun around and her hands are getting pulled over her head and crossed in various directions that lead to another spin.... Then the instructors kept pushing us about the elegant thing to do with one's arms and how to tilt one's head, while I didn't know where to put my feet. Screw elegance, I was just trying to end up in the right place standing on the right foot (and not on my partner's). I tried to laugh off the howling blunders I made as we continually exchanged dance partners (and I can tell you right now who the better leaders were among the men, because I got less lost with them), but eventually, the guys were getting frustrated that they couldn't learn their bits because I kept screwing up. And that increased my frustration--and activated some very insecure adolescent part of myself that ended up feeling utterly humiliated. I had to leave before the class was over or I'd have started to cry. I know that was largely an overreaction brought on by the fact that my emotional state is pretty precarious (a consequence of stress, grief, exhaustion), but I just felt miserable.

So I came home--to find an incredibly nasty, vituperous note from my downstairs neighbor, reactivating a feud I thought we'd laid to rest months ago. (This time she was enraged because I'd let the meter reader into her part of the house--I'm sorry, but that's where the meters are--and because I hadn't carried the garbage can back to the side of the house, even though I hadn't had any garbage in today's pick up--along with other accusations that I frankly didn't even understand.) That tore it. I called my friend Szilvia and promptly turned into a blubbering mess. After Szil talked me down off the metaphoric ledge, I composed a reply to the neighbor's message, employing my mother's wonderful tactic of being "relentlessly polite." (It's the word "relentless" that does it. If I continue to be polite and reasonable in the face of this woman's insane accusations, ultimately she will have to start feeling like a little bit of a jerk to continue raging at me.) Having written the reply, I think I'm starting to regain some sort of equilibrium.

And I'm now able to look at the dance class analytically, thinking about the teacher-student dynamic from the other side and how awful it is to feel left behind and unsupported--and stupid--like that. I hope I can turn my experience into some kind of pedagogical shift for myself. Plus, I need to take my own advice to students. I tell them to be proactive in their own education: I'm now working out how I can approach the instructors before my next lesson (whenever that is) to see if there is a way for them to accommodate my needs without dragging the rest of the class down. My first inclination was just to run away, but that's that insecure adolescent ... hmmmm, and exactly whom do I teach? It's good to be viscerally reminded what many of them must feel as they approach the intense demands of my classes.

Anyway, I think I may be starting to wind down and let go of all the emotional upheaval--now that it's way past "bedtime." I do have to be at that norming session tomorrow a.m., and I do have that appointment at 6, but now I think I will come home in between so if I need to nap, I can. And I've already confirmed that I will, by god, have my riding lesson on Friday. I'll work like a galley slave as much as is humanly possible over the next four days, but I also must allow myself some moments that get my head completely somewhere else. Horse time does that. I can hardly wait.