Every so often, I’m tempted to get a big head. Like when yet another woman from my department remarks on what a great teacher I am. Like when the guy in front of me in biochemistry thinks I’m a Ph.D. student. Like when another classmate in biochem thinks I’m a professor (really?) <\/p>\n
Then I try to take a more objective look at things. So I’m a good teacher. Maybe I am. But it’s not by any personal merit. I love teaching, I love the material, I love imparting knowledge. It makes me come alive. But this is what teaching does to me, not what I do to it. <\/p>\n
And why would people think I’m so much smarter than I am? No idea. But it’s just an illusion. I look put together. I sound like I know what I’m talking about. I ask questions to clarify what the professor said to make sure that I’m understanding the information correctly. Not that I’m actually that smart. A Ph.D? Even a Ph.D. student? <\/p>\n
Not that I haven’t thought about it. But, truth is, I’m a (2nd year) Master’s student who’s currently overwhelmed by school and hasn’t even written her thesis proposal. <\/p>\n
In the euphoria of teaching, I consider the further education to be just a tiny hurdle to overcome. But when I come off the buzz, even just finishing my master’s seems insurmountable.<\/p>\n
The thousand dreams compete with one another for first place, and I think in a moment of stillness: maybe I’ll just drop out of school and get married and spend the next ten years barefoot and pregnant. <\/p>\n
Problem is, I want to do that and STILL have the master’s degree, and get to teach, and run a church-based community center, and have a ginormous library, and write the great American novel, and bike across the state of Nebraska, and be a world traveler, and be a lactation consultant, and be a doula, and be a player in the political scene, and, and, and…<\/p>\n
I’m caught in the difficult middle between a fierce pride that wants to do everything well and a false modesty that states that I do nothing so well as I’d like. <\/p>\n
C.S. Lewis suggested that a truly humble man would be quite unprepossessing, not at all interested in what others thought of him, far more interested in others themselves. I am definitely not that humble man. I care way too much about where I fall on my own and others’ charts. I’m proud to have topped theirs, humiliated that I have fallen so short of my own. Neither is anywhere near humility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every so often, I’m tempted to get a big head. Like when yet another woman from my department remarks on what a great teacher I am. Like when the guy in front of me in biochemistry thinks I’m a Ph.D. student. Like when another classmate in biochem thinks I’m a professor (really?) Then I try … Read more Short of humility<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}