This morning I got angry.
And I admit that humbly, recognizing that I'm very rarely one to get angry and haven't been this ticked off in quite a while. While it was likely egged on by my serious lack of sleep the night before, I cannot make excuses for how irrational my anger was. It manifested itself in two ways-- the first being me skipping the bus and power walking from Ramsey to the bcm after class to let of steam (for those of you in non-UGA world, it's a haul.) and the second being my immediate desire to write about it.
For the past two weeks, my classmates and I have been working our tails off on a "critical issues" project and the results have actually been really great. My group focused on addressing underserved populations in Athens with an emphasis on teenage moms. We were given short amounts of time and little to no direction, just simply told to do research and do some sort of something to help educate the community. The final day of this project was yesterday when we did formal presentations on all of our work. We were completely on our own with no direction and contradictory information, details I'll spare at the risk of becoming angry once more. This is the way my major goes and to be honest, I think it's a good thing. While I wish we were given more direction and more organization, we've all been forced to grow up a lot and figure out just how to take initiative in the dark. Sometimes I think it's a cop out on the teaching team's behalf, but sometimes I really do believe it's intentional and I know I'm learning from it regardless.
Putting that rant aside... yesterday we presented and I am proud of the work my group has done. We actually collaborated a 20 page document that is now being distributed to teen moms in Athens listing affordable resources, clinics, activities, scholarships, etc. and even the details of how to navigate the websites and which bus routes to take to get places. Incredible. We presented like pros, fielded questions like experts, and walked away with a sense of pride in our seemingly impossible accomplishment. All the groups did.
Today was supposed to be debrief and reflection day in class. The attitude in the room took a 180 turn when one of our teachers basically stood up in front of us and told us in not so many words what a terrible job we had done and how he didn't feel we had given it anywhere near our best as a class considering work we have done in the past. That might not have been exactly what he meant, but that's how it was interpreted. He then opened the floor for discussion of what we could have done better. I understand what he was trying to do, but it came off in a way that we all took personally. Having someone shatter your hard work with no consideration is difficult, especially when hearing that you didn't complete the assignment as given, knowing that they had really given you nothing. When attempting to defend ourselves and stand up under the constraints we had been given, the room got a little hostile as the teacher continued to push the blame back onto the students. If there's anything I dislike, it is blame... the project was a short amount of time to attempt to save the world but all the groups had raised passion and awareness, a reached goal in and of itself.
I mostly sat quietly, seething with anger at the way this was so bluntly addressed in response to such ambiguous failure. I had my argument lined up clearly in my head but I didn't speak-- sometimes it isn't even necessary. At that moment, the words of Lance Howerton popped into my head. I quickly grabbed a pen and wrote them across the front of my binder for that class-- something I think will be a necessary reminder in many of the unorganized days to come.
"Be a learner, not a critic."
It helps to remember that in this situation, as anything in life, it does not help to push around blame or criticize the situation. After thinking about this more, I did speak up in an effort to verbalize that I was proud of my group's work in a difficult situation. I also did my best to articulate that I could sit and criticize the flaws of this project all day but what helps more often is to just learn from it and move on.
In life, you will have hard situations to rise up underneath. Often I'm tempted to just have a complaint fest about them but what helps more is to assess the situation and roll with it, taking it as a lesson for the future. I had no reason to get angry and really had to get myself in check. My job is not to criticize how well or poorly my teachers, bosses, coworkers, or friends do what they are doing... only to learn from it. Throwing blame around helps no one. Debriefing can be a wonderful thing, though my method tends to be more of a "what did we do well? what can we do better?". Today I learned that telling someone their hard work failed is not necessarily the key to motivating them to do better and that sometimes in life, people will tell you that anyway. It's about keeping yourself in check, learning from other people's methods, finding the good in situations, and prompting other people to see that good also. So maybe you need to take an angry thirty minute walk and go eat some tacos with a friend... anger is all about how you handle it and every day is all about being a life learner. Debrief everything, learn from it all.
This post was not necessarily intended as an earth shattering revelation for any of the readers, but more of a processing tool for me. Attempting to live holy takes a day by day effort and day by day I will fail. Such is the beauty of God's grace in my life... so I'll keep on learning.
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