My Meteoric Rise

It all started with, "Can I help?"

The company I'm teaching for is struggling with the demands of a huge corporate contract they recently obtained. In a nutshell, three months ago there was no program at all here in Albuquerque - no office, no employees - zilch. Now, there are hundreds of people eligible to receive ESL instruction, with hundreds more expected over the next two years; about 20 newly trained instructors, many of whom work only part time; one very overwhelmed staffer stuggling to keep up with scheduling, payroll, sales, and all the other administrative tasks; a director trying to run the dang thing from another city; an antiquated computer system; mass confusion and chaos; not enough instructional materials to go around; lots of room for error and disaster; and a platoon of stressed out, desperate, frustrated students and instructors.

This is the type of situation I excell at: just call me Superclerk. I'm ridiculously efficient, organized, and capable in an office environment, especially if there's a looming crisis. I get an adrenaline rush when I'm solving problems and handling touchy moments.

As one of the newly-trained and -hired teachers who experienced all sorts of stumbles (wrong student addresses, wrong class times, wrong phone numbers) in my first three weeks of classes, I was well aware of the growing buzz of frustration/desperation. So I said, "Can I help?"

What I figured was that I would put in a few hours each week in the office, cleaning up messes and getting some organization into it. That's what I thought. What happened was that within a week, I was "hired," put on a full-time admin schedule, whisked to Phoenix for training, given responsibility for scheduling and payroll, and whisked back to Albuquerque.

Now, while I was in Phoenix, the local instructor supervisor in Albuquerque had a meltdown and quit. I commiserated with the director and wondered which of my colleagues would be chosen.

Well, I was chosen. My second promotion in less than a month.

I'm now the instructional supervisor 3 days a week, and the service rep 2 days a week. I handle the instructor hiring and training, evaluate new students, evaluate the instructors, conduct "enrichment" classes, and every once in a while, do some fill-in teaching when an instructor is sick.

Someone is flying out here next week to train me on the new position, and then I'll be training 10 new instructors the following week. Sheesh! It amazes me that only two months ago I hadn't even considered a career in ESL, and by the end of the week I'll be supervising 30 instructors. Can I really be capable of this? All the mucky-mucks seem to think so, but I have my doubts.

I've been working 12 hour days, 7 days a week, trying to clean up the horrendous mess here, and I'm exhilarated/exhausted in that Olympian Apollo Ohno way: I'm ready to tackle the next race, but I'll need to collapse once it's done. I've had sleepless nights, which lead to cramping legs and feet, incipient cold sore outbreaks, caffeine overuse, more sleepless nights, etc. Today was the first day I could just loll around, read Vanity Fair, and eat a big salad.

Truthfully, my diet has tanked for three weeks. I was unprepared for the rush of work and fell back on fast food grabbed at odd hours of the day and night. Yes, mostly I ordered salads, but there have been a few burgers thrown down the gullet along the way, and that's not so good.

I haven't gained any weight this month; I haven't lost any, either. It's a wash. But I feel badly that I got off-track. I need to cook me a pot of brown rice and start bringing lunch with me. So that's what I'm gonna do tonight.

There's a chapter in one of the ESL advanced levels regarding management styles. The examples are Milt and Wilt. Milt is a can-do type who delegates all his work and looks terrifically calm. Wilt is frazzled, his desk is piled high with crap, and he's got dark circles under his eyes.

I'll be Milt one day soon. For now, I'm Wilt - with a cold sore.

Ah well.

The Runner Stumbles

First of all, I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching! The students are just delightful, full of enthusiasm and charm. I think it's mostly because we tend to communicate at a childlike level that the conversations are clean - free of politics, sarcasm, cynicism, humorless humor, bullshit - it's all just pure desire on both our parts to understand each other. Quite beautiful, really.

It reminds me of when I was in Amsterdam years ago. I'd sit on a barstool in this gay "coffee" house all day, talking with Amsterdammers who were glad for the opportunity to practice their rudimentary English, the study of which is mandatory for fifth and sixth graders there. Conversations went something like this:

Ridiculously Sexy Man from Amsterdam - "America has much treasures."
Me - "You mean like the Grand Canyon?"
SM - "No, no, Disneyvorlt."
Me - "Ahhhh, I liked Disneyworld."
SM (huge smile) - "You go there?"
Me - "Yes! It was a happy place and FUN!"
SM (thoughtful) - "Yes, I want go to Pirates of Caribbean sometimes."
Me - "Oh, you would love it. There are pirates and a big fire at night."
SM (another huge smile) - "And Goofy is all the time there, eh?"
Me - "Yes! Goofy and Mickey and Donald Duck."
SM - "It being great day when I be there."
Me - "I know you will go there someday and feel happy."
SM (sigh) - "Yes."

Okay, it may not seem like the most scintillating conversation. I have brilliant, interesting, eccentric friends for that. But the simplicity of it and the emotions shared (joy, yearning, wonder) are a far cry from the usual conversation between strangers.

It makes my heart glad.

My ESL classes are sort of like that. The students are from Costa Rica, Malaysia, China, and the Philippines, and most are very well educated - engineers, technicians, and managers. Some classes are one-on-one, and I also have groups of up to four students at a time for the two-hour sessions. The classes are held in the students' apartments, so I'm on the road, darting from complex to complex, from eight in the morning until as late as nine at night. I usually have a half hour between classes.

Now, this is the difficult part - the apartment complexes are all located in an area of town that's been turned from barren high desert to suburban sprawl in just the last five years or so. About 50,000 people now call this part of the city home. And so do about a thousand fast-food joints.

I've given up fast food. It doesn't work for me. But the sheer visibility of the places coupled with my new on-the-road schedule has started to pull at me. "Why not get a salad or something?" the brain says. "It won't hurt you." "Go ahead - just a diet beverage." "You know you're thirsty." "Use their bathroom and buy the cheapest thing on the menu." And so on.

Yesterday, I had a class that went pretty well but that I felt I could've done a better job. The student seemed a little bored, and I wasn't too good at engaging her in a conversation that interested her. Instead of the two-hour lesson flying by as they usually do, it became just a tad tedious. By the end, I felt tired and a little blah. On my way to the next lesson, almost unconsciously, I pulled into a McDonald's drive-through and got two McChicken sandwiches. They weren't very good.

Afterward, during my last class of the day, I felt bloated, uncomfortable, a little light-headed, unfocused, and (most tellingly) quite shitty about myself. I couldn't enjoy the lesson or my delightful students. I was depressed when I got home and, although I tried not to be, was pretty cranky with my housemate. I also was hungry - starving, in fact.

Here's where the light dawns.

I realized that making the decision to eat the McChickens was not so much about going off the food plan, but about how my insecurities as a new teacher triggered the "not good enough/inevitability of failure" core beliefs which had laid dormant for the last few months. It's interesting that when I'm in this time of success, when I'm embarking on a new career and having lots of pleasure, that the old negative core beliefs make an appearance. Why? Because they're threatened by MOST of the evidence. How can I keep believing I'm not good enough if, clearly, I am? How can I keep believing that I will inevitably fail if there are no indications of that? So when the insecurities open the door, the false core beliefs assert themselves and, in an innocuous way, take me by the hand to a very simple, cheap, and readily available way to prove they're right. "See? You went off your plan. You ARE a failure. See? It's inevitable. Just face it. You're not good enough and that's that. The bread crumbs on your face are uncontrovertable proof. I rest my case. Verdict: guilty. Take him away!"

Well, I'm not buying into it.

I KNOW I'm good enough.
I KNOW that failure is NOT inevitable.
I KNOW that these negative core beliefs are false.

And . . . . . . . . I forgive myself completely for eating the McChickens.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to see that some false core beliefs still remain.
I love and approve of myself.

Yes, I will arm myself with tupperware containers full of brown rice and veggies, and have a huge water jug in the car from now on. But that's not really the point.

I will remind myself that a little insecurity when starting a whole spanking new career is par for the course. There's room for improvement (as with any neophyte) and with time and effort, I'll be a better teacher. In the meantime, I'll do my best, keep believing in myself, and ac-cent-u-ate the pos-i-tive.

Suddenly I have a need to see a DVD double feature: "Up the Down Staircase" and "To Sir, With Love."

Fresh Face

Today I shaved off my full beard and moustache.

I am facial hair-free for the first time in 17 years. My beard could have graduated from high school by now.

I first grew a beard when I was 30. I wanted to grow one years before, but I waited because the hair on my upper lip didn't fill out enough to "support" a mustache until then, and I didn't want an Amish look (sorry, Sheila!). At first it accomplished the two things I was looking to do: swathe my pronounced double chin in darkness, and put an end to those embarrassing "Are you a boy or a girl?" questions I used to get from kids in supermarkets.

It was a rather handsome beard, soft from handsful of conditioner and more rusty red (and more luxuriant) than the hair up top. Although I would've preferred a scruffy counterculture look a la Jeff Bridges in King Kong (1970's version), admittedly the effect was more like Mr. French. But I got into it. I never wore an ascot, though.

I wasn't very good at beard maintenance. There would be times when the left side was nicely proportioned and the right side looked like I used pruning shears in a darkroom. I found that trimming it at work - at my desk - under fluorescent light - at the Justice Department - was the easiest, but occasionally I'd be caught red-handed and red-faced, a dusting of whiskers over the entire desk top. That wasn't so good. Unprofessional, doncha know.

When I graduated to using an electric clipper - at home - the results were more uniform, but there were a few disasters. One that comes to mind: I had forgotten to replace the guard over the blade and accidentally mowed an inch-wide strip from my neck to my bottom lip before I realized what I was doing. The exposed white flesh fairly glowed compared to the dark beard on either side. It looked like I was drooling milk. I wore a bandage over it for three weeks and had the whole office wondering what had happened to my face.

Over time, as my hair turned silver, its camouflaging properties waned. But the spectre of all that jiggly white chin flapping for all the world to see kept me from shaving it off.

This morning, I thought, "Hmmmmmm - I've lost enough weight that I could maybe go hairless!" So without a second thought I did it. Three razor blades and about half a can of shaving cream later, the deed was done. I debated keeping the moustache, and pondered the various configurations possible for the sideburns, but in the end I opted for a Kennedyesque look (all right, Ted Kennedyesque).

For the first few minutes, I stared into the mirror, wondering who this baby-faced guy was. The skin is surprisingly smooth, protected all these years from the sun and razor burn, but when did the lines get so damned deep? I contemplated taking a quick trip to Mexico for a round of botox injections or a little surgical freshening up. But then a funny thing happened: I started seeing some of my parents' facial features reflected there, and it was strangely comforting to have Mom and Dad with me again.

So here I am, unmasked, revealed, naked to the world.

It's definitely okay.

But I'm going to start doing those turkeyneck exercises first thing in the morning.

Happy worker

Can I just tell you how fun it is to teach? I don't think I've enjoyed work this much since, well, never. I've had great volunteer jobs, like building sets for the community theater when I was 15 or planning an auction for a non-profit organization, and I've certainly had great moments or days or even weeks at every job I've ever had, but the sheer joy of this is a thrilling new experience for me.

It just fits me like a glove.

Woo hoo!