Chapter Eight: On Bad Interviews, Homesickness and What’s the Point of Life?

It’s Tuesday evening, I have a phone interview with Teach for Australia in two hours. I had set aside the time tonight to prepare for the interview, to look over the Teach for Australia mission and collect my thoughts on education. But as I read I become more and more distressed. The questions feel impossible to answer naturally “Why do you want to be part of Teach for Australia?”

I don’t know anything about educational disadvantage. All I know is that I love to teach, that reading about education gets me fired up more than anything else… or so I thought. The more I read the more I feel a disparity between the sort of super-motivated exuberantly passionate person they are looking for and who I feel like at the moment.

By the end of the hour I’m not quite sure what my motivation for life is anymore. I thought this was it. I love education. But I feel so inadequate for what they are asking. I’m not even sure I enjoy learning at the moment, I realise in panic. Didn’t I always used to love learning? Why not now? What happened to that enthusiastic passionate cheerful person I used to be?

I start practicing out loud, but my voice is shaky and dotted with “ums” and “uh…s”. The sound of my own voice stagnant in the room with no conversation to bounce off throws me into a bout of homesickness. I wish there was someone to talk to, some one to offer a few words of comfort, advice, anything!

The interview goes terribly. I struggled on every question. Changed my mind half a dozen times. My Skype call even decides to drop out on me because I run out of credit.

I’m completely miserable by the time I hang up. I’m homesick for talking to someone I know. I have for the last three years been looking forward to applying to Teach for Australia why did I at the crucial moment run out of passion and enthusiasm? If this is where my heart is where is it? What do I care about in life? What is the point of life?

What is the point of life?

I swear I knew before I came on exchange. If only I could go home. Have but just a day in a familiar place with familiar people. Then maybe I would remember myself. Remember what my passion is for. Where my heart is. What I care about. The point of life.

All my miseries are fuelling each other, and I don’t know how to stop it all.

Eventually I run out of tears. And am thankful for the exhausted calm.

***

The next day I am sitting in maths class and struggling to keep the panic at bay. I had watched one of the Teach for Australia videos the night before: a cheerful girl talking about what make a good maths teacher. “To be a good teacher you’ve got to be in love with the subject that you teach. I feel like no one talks about how life links up to real life. I really want to share with my students about how planes fly, how water flows…”

And as I’m sitting in my maths class I’m wondering: what’s the point. Man, this is so hard. There’s so much homework. I don’t see why this applies to life. I just liked it before because it was easy and then because it was beautiful, and then because it was a challenge that hadn’t destroyed me yet… but maybe it’s destroying me now. I never understood what high school maths students must be feeling when they sit with that bored completely unengaged posture in maths class, but right now I completely empathise. What’s the point of this? Why should I struggle with it if it doesn’t matter anyway?

I come home to read my reader for my Introduction to Schools class. “Perils and Promises of Praise” (Carol A. Dweck, Educational Leadership 65, no. 2 October 2007, pp. 34-39.) is the article. As I start to read, phrases and sentences pop out at me and I underline them fervently, poising above my reader on the carpet with a pencil like a cat about to pounce.

 I think educators commonly hold two beliefs that [produced a generation of young people who can’t get through the day without an award]. Many believe that (1) praising students’ intelligence builds their confidence and motivation to learn, and (2) students’ inherent intelligence is the major couse of their achievement in school. Out research has shown that the first belief is false and that the second can be harmful – even for the most competent students.

[…]

Praise is intricately connected to how students view their intelligence. Some students believe that their intellectual ability is a fixed trait. They have a certain amount of intelligence, and that’s that. Students with this fixed min-set become excessively concerned with how smart they are, seeking tasks that will prove their intelligence and avoiding ones that might not (Dweck, 1999, 2006). The desire to learn takes a back seat. 

Other students believe that their intellectual ability is something they can develop through effort and education. When students believe [this] they focus on doing just that. Not worrying about how smart they will appear, they take on challenges and stick to them (Dweck, 1999, 2006).

[…] In the face of failure these students escalate their efforts and look for new learning strategies. [One student in the study] find’s [algebra] hard, and confusing, unlike anything else she has ever learned. But she’s determined to understand it. […] As she begins to get it, she feels exhilarated. A new world of math opens up for her. 

[…] As a group, students who had been praised for their intelligence lost their confidence in their ability and their enjoyment of the task as soon as they began to struggle with the problem. If success meant the were smart, then struggling meant they were not. The whole point of intelligence praise is to boost confidence and motivation, but both were cone in a flash.

Adolescents often see school as a place where they perform for teachers who them judge them. The growth mind-set changes that perspective and makes school a place where students vigorously engage in learning for their own benefit.

Wow! What a beautiful picture of education! I’m completely enchanted. This is what I love about education. This is what sets off sparks of ideas in my mind and makes me want to get out there and teach. Yes! I found it again! My passion!

But more than that I had indeed let my “confidence and motivation” get washed away in my struggles in my classes, in the stress of everything. But it’s okay! It’s okay! I wanted to shout that out the window. (I opened a new blog post instead.)

I think I’m a mix between a fixed learner and a growth learning. I completely know the feeling that “The desire to learn takes a back seat.” Especially recently I have been struggling against a underlying fear of letting my grades drop below a less than over-achiever standard. Without the continued sense of achieving that I had with easier maths subjects I was struggling to keep motivated and trust in my own ability.

But, I also know that feeling of being “exhilarated [as a] new world of math opens up for her.” I just need to cling onto the latter rather than the former.

Actually, without the pressure of Teach for Australia, ridiculously good grades don’t actually matter so much. Perhaps now I can try and focus on learning and enjoying it. And, I guess deep down I still love thinking about education (even if the intimidating requirements of Teach for Australia had temporarily disabled me.)

I’m still not sure what the point of life is. But it doesn’t feel too inconceivable that my life has a point anymore.