A field guide to growing up without growing apart

Author: Ariel

Life Sucks When Your Friends Leave

It sucks when your friends leave. I know this is just a fact of life. It was only three years ago that the naughty princesses began to split up—each going their separate way, each living their own life. I was the first to leave. I […]

COTM – July – Poetry of Summer

  Hey!  So it’s that time of the month again! Our favorite time, the Condition of the Month!  Well this month the princesses were given the task of all writing a piece of poetry for the blog.  This was supposed to be about the season […]

My Sister and Me, or The Big Mess

So, I don’t have the best relationship with my sister—as in, we haven’t talked in over six months. It pains me that we are not in touch, and I know this is a situation I need to rectify, I just don’t know how.

My sister is 19 years older than me. Technically, she is my half sister, as in she was my dad’s child from his previous marriage before he met my mom. Because of the significant age gap between us, we have never had a completely normal sibling relationship. However, we have always been in touch and fairly close, until a little over a year ago.

The whole situation is wound up in messy family politics that I don’t have the will or energy to explain, but basically, over a year ago, my sister had a big fight with my mom. Now, normally when people fight, they yell and scream a little, but RV Catultimately smooth things out—we are family after all. Well, what does my sister do? She up and moves to Costa Rica. (Now, picture an RV filled with cats, driving all the way through the dodgy parts of Mexico and central America).

Now, maybe you think I am making things up. But it’s the truth. So, my sister (along with her husband and six cats) moved to Costa Rica—and I haven’t seen her since. We sent a few emails, but somehow it just dropped off and it’s been… six months.

My sister is one of those people who have difficultly viewing situations from the perspective of others and has a very strong sense of the rightness of their position. This has caused her to become alienated from several other members of my family, not just my mom. I feel so bad—I want to have a relationship with my sister, it’s just so hard right now. It’s hard because I feel this tremendous pressure from her to ‘take her side’, which is something I cannot do. It makes me wary of talking with her, or someday visiting her in Costa Rica, because I know she will try to engage me in having long conversation about my mom and other sensitive issues that I have no desire to discuss with her.

I know that part of the problem is my own deep-seeded fear of conflict. I should just be able to stand up to my sister, tell her I don’t want to talk about it and can’t take her side, but I still love her and want to be in relationship with her. I need to do something—I feel like there is this huge elephant in the room. Especially after six months of not talking I don’t feel like I can just send her a chatty email about my life. There is this huge elephant in the room. I need to do something to face it head on, but I am not sure what to say or how to go about it.

Family relationships can be so confusing!

Three People you Meet on a Pilgrimage

  So, a week ago I got back from a pilgrimage in Italy.  Now maybe you’re asking—people still go on pilgrimages? And the answer is yes, they do!  The most popular pilgrimage route in modern days is the camino de Santiago in Spain.  However, instead […]

Some notes on Old English charms: or why being a PhD student is the best.

Hey there blogging world!  It’s been a long time!  I feel bad to have left you all hanging so long there’s just been lots of stuff happening!  First, Sleeping Booty was here visiting me—for the first time ever—and we were basically having a great time […]

March COTM: Teaching?

If you are new here, every month we princesses all opine on a single question or issue.  This month we are talking about teaching!  Pretty much everyone knows a teacher– or, in the case of Cinderslut, is one– and we all have our own opinions on what it takes to be a good teacher.

sleeping booty tileOh man, I love everything about being a teacher except the actual teaching part. Give me children of any age, some craft supplies, summers off and I’d be set for life, but ask me to lecture for an hour or think of a lesson plan or, heaven forbid, grade papers I’ll straight up cry in your face. Why can’t there be such thing as a kindly, advice-giving, hobby facilitator that kids all have to spend ten or so hours a week with?

As a soul searching 20-something with a degree in mathematics and no career plan to speak of, my teaching ability is questioned daily. I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the last two weeks I’ve been told at least 5 times that I should consider being a teacher, and I can’t deny it’s enticing when an overwhelming percentage of the people I’ve met on this adventure so far are teachers of some sort, taking advantage of their breaks to explore the world.

The life of a teacher is rewarding, I saw that when I coached high school basketball and my girls stepped up to make the difficult choices, and entertaining, I still laugh to myself at the jokes the kids told me when I taught science summer camp a few summers ago, but it’s also incredibly difficult, asking you to say goodbye on a regular basis and sometimes makes choices on whether or not a child can be taught.

I know I’ve gotten off subject, but the thing is I do know what makes a good teacher and… I think I have it. I care about the success of others, I enjoy learning and creating and sharing. I’d enjoy the changing seasons and I’d thrive as an afterschool coach/club director/school supporter, encouraging all subjects and all career paths. I read other people fairly well, and don’t push over when I really believe I’m right. I even love the idea of making my own grading scale – think of all the possibilities!

As for my teaching style I know I’m very hands off; I like to let people make their own decisions and then help them understand what worked and what didn’t. I don’t want to tell a kid what the main points of a novel are, I want him to tell me and prove to me why; I don’t want to teach someone the correct way of solving the problem, but give her options and let her choose which makes the most sense.

I know I’d love being a teacher, and though right now I lack the confidence and authority to actually become one, one day I’ll probably end up there.

snowwhore tileWhen I think about the best teachers that I’ve ever had, one thing comes to mind. Passion.  A good teacher is one who is passionate about the subject matter, and is able to so effectively communicate that passion that it becomes your passion as well.

I have never been a fan of math. I excelled in my math classes growing up, but only because I was a goody two shoes and worked really hard because grades meant everything to me.  However, I loved Calculus. I looked forward to that class, and genuinely enjoyed doing it. Why? Because my teacher was passionate and amazing.  He cracked jokes, and read us Dave Barry articles, and took the time and effort to break down the equations as much as we needed until we had a comprehensive understanding.  I still don’t like math, but I loved Mr. Johnson’s calculus class.

However, when I think about passionate teachers, I know that I have the two best examples right at home.  My mother teaches elementary music and my dad is an elementary librarian.  They put everything into teaching because they know how important it is.  They never do anything on autopilot, and they never take the easy way out. Most music concerts in elementary schools feature the kids on stage standing in rows and singing. But not my mother’s concerts.  She has a full set of marimbas that she teaches the older kids to play, kindergartners are given rhythm blocks and tambourines, and every Christmas she also puts on a full musical, sometimes they are ones she has written herself.  And my dad is the same way in his library. He has costumes and puppets that he uses to do full productions during story time. He creates his own unique curriculum to teach the kids everything they need to know about every computer program and lets them do their own primitive graphic design projects and PowerPoint presentations.  He has even created his own superhero called Captain Read Right, who rollerblades around the school making the different classrooms compete to see who can read the most.

Passion makes all the difference in teaching. That’s what my parents showed me every day growing up. I still have people who come up to me in my hometown and tell me how my mom or dad was their favorite teacher. They will always be my standard for judging excellence in educators.

cinderslut tile (2)Well, in about 8 weeks I will hold a Master’s in Teaching degree, so it follows that I should know a thing or two about this topic. That being said, although I’ve spent the better part of two years of my life pursuing this degree, and I’ve read up on plenty of pedagogy, I know I won’t truly be a “Master” teacher for many more years. Teaching is something you can only learn to do by doing it.

Still, if I had to pick one thing that makes a teacher great, I’d go with engagement. This educational buzzword really is the key to everything, because if you can’t keep your students interested, they won’t learn a thing. And if they don’t learn a thing, you haven’t actually taught anything. In college I had a couple of truly awful classes in which the professors (tenured, of course) spent hours talking at us, but never really engaged us with the material. They may have had advanced degrees and been knowledgeable experts in their subject, but today I cannot remember a thing from their class, other than how deeply, deeply I despised being there. They were terrible teachers, because they didn’t bother to pursue engagement.

Last year, teaching high school English, I mostly BSed my way through the year, but I was still successful, and I attribute that not to my Master’s degree, my own knowledge, or anything else but the simple fact that I kept things interesting, mixed it up, played games, let the students make choices, listened to their opinions, and they bought in. They engaged.

The really great teachers do a lot of other things too, but I think it all starts with engagement. And in my experience, bringing chocolate-chip pumpkin cookies for the class never hurts, either.

little merskank tileA few weeks ago I was asked to read a book called Learning to  Teaching in Higher Education—and it accomplished its goal:  it got me thinking about teaching.   However, I found that I somehow found something disagreeable in the approach of the book.  It was very modern and stressed the importance of teaching ‘learning’ over ‘information’.  On the surface I agree with this distinction, yet when I thought about it more I realized precisely how important ‘information’ can be. Sometimes think that in our rejection of old fashioned teaching techniques we have effectively thrown out the baby with the bath water.  Of course, none of us likes the paradigm of rote memorization of tables and figures, but it is a problem I think if the facts and figures are never learnt at all.  I see this particularly in modern language study where important grammatical concepts are glossed over or not addressed, to, I believe, the ultimate detriment of the student.

Of course, the ideal is to convey both information and promote learning in an engaging way.  Now, for me, when I think about teaching I think about teaching at the university—which is I think something fundamentally different than teaching at high school, which is what the other princesses have mostly written about.  At the high school level (or earlier) the teacher is very much is the facilitator between the student and the material.  However, at the college level when you are teaching adults, and I feel like the student’s interest and participation has to be somewhat their own responsibility.   To some degree, I think that at the university level good teaching is as much about not inhibiting the student as it is about helping them—it is about letting them think independently, not confining them to certain sets of opinions or approaches, and letting them learn freely.  In practice, some students need more help than others, and there has to be a grey middle ground—but ultimately, I would say that the best teachers give students the tools to do their own learning.

And what about you reader?  What’s your teaching philosophy? 

Tongue-Tied

Language barriers suck.  This has always been true, but has been affecting me more than usual in the last few days, so I decided to share a short rant with my fellow readers. So, the house I live in hosts a variety of different people.  […]

An Aerial Weakness

Hello.  My name is the Little Merskank, and I have a problem.  A problem with flying. So, it all started about a year ago.  I have always enjoyed flying—seeing the ground go by below, all that free time to yourself, free bubbly beverages.  But this […]

Living with Monks

So a few months ago I moved house.    My lease was ending and my house-mates were moving away, so I needed a new place.  Luckily, my friend (read: monk 1), suggested that I could live at his house.  I had been

Orthodox monks look kind of like this...
Orthodox monks look kind of like this…

there a couple times for parties (monk parties, for the win!) and it seemed pretty nice: big Victorian house, nice garden, Orthodox church in the back yard, etc.  So, in light of having basically no other real options, I said yes and put in an application.

And, basically—it’s been great!  My room is lovely; it is on the top floor overlooking the garden and it is the perfect size and has an amazing view of trees and church towers.  And the rent is cheaper than basically anywhere else in Oxford.  Can you say, win?

The house is meant as a sort of ecumenical meeting place, for those from different backgrounds and faiths to be able to exchange ideas.  However, there is a distinctively Eastern Orthodox flavour to the house (and well, there is the whole church-in-the-back-yard thing).   Most people in the house study something either Greek or Byzantine related, and it is not unusual to hear phrases such as ‘well, in Syriac…’

But yeah, the best thing about this house is that it is full of very odd people—and, in my book at least, weird people are the best!  My neighbour is a Buddhist monk (aka monk 2).  He can be seen running around in distinctive red and orange garb—aka, his robe.  He only has one (making laundry days a bit tricky…).  But yeah, he is super

...  and Buddhist monks look kind of like this.
… and Buddhist monks look kind of like this.

nice and makes really good tea.  His best friend in the house is a tall, skinny, sarcastic Italian guy who likes to (secretly) smoke cigars in his room and walks around the house at night wearing a vintage ‘smoking cap’ and gown. Then there is the Lebanese guy downstairs who works on an unknown eastern medieval philosopher, and who is constantly involved in some sort of personal drama involving  girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, or soon –to-be ex-girlfriends.  Then of course, there is my friend from before, the other monk—of the Eastern Orthodox variety.   He is a cool dude; he was a monk at Mount Athos in Greece where his job was to take care of the monastery’s library… and then the library burned down (fail).  So now he is at Oxford getting his PhD while they rebuild it.

So…we make an interesting bunch.  Let me give you an example of a normal evening in the house, aka yesterday evening.

Monk 2: ‘Hey Merskank, we are going to watch a film down in the kitchen.  Do you want to join?’

Me: ‘What are you watching’.

Monk 2: ‘It’s a documentary on Derrida’.

[yes,  this really is how we apparently spend our Sunday nights]

Me :  ‘…… Okay.’

*movie begins*

*30 minutes into the movie has to be stopped because Monk 1 and Monk 2 are engaged in heated debate about the nature of the personality and whether personal attributes are essential or malleable*

*the audience starts taking bets on which monk will win.  I place my bets on monk 1*

*At last, the film is resumed*

Basically, I love my house.

Why the Early Middle Ages Rock

Is there something that really has been bugging you lately?  Like something  in your life that just doesn’t seem right?  Well, for me that thing is the late Middle Ages.  I mean, they hog all the glory for themselves!  When people talk about the Middle Ages today, I feel like […]

My Single-Handed Fight Against ‘the Man’

I don’t know about you, but I hate it the way it seems like companies always try to cheat you nowadays.  They will post special offers or rebates but there is almost always a catch.  It sometimes seems like they will do everything they can […]

Condition of the Month- October

Hey, so we’re a little bit late this month with the condition of the month.  The Little Merksank will take all the blame for that as she has been neglecting her duties.  However, that special time of the month has finally come.  Indeed, it is an extra special month because it is our blog-aversary.  It’s been one whole year since the naughty princesses started blogging together.  Can you believe it?  We hardly can…

In honor of that occasion, we decided to all revisit an old blog post that we wrote a year ago and comment on how that year has changed us.

snowwhore tileWhere was I one year ago? Well, pretty much exactly where I am now. In some ways nothing has changed, in other ways a lot has changed.

A year ago, I was really really a newlywed. I had just come back from my honeymoon. I was posting about what it was like to live with a boy, and the awkward transition of combining two lives into one.  Now I no longer feel awkward at all—in fact I’m pretty sure I would be miserable if I had to live alone again.  However, that doesn’t mean our struggles are over.  I do think my marriage has gotton stronger over the last year. There is a lot that we have overcome. However, there is still a lot more to struggle through together.  I feel more connected to my husband than I did a year ago, because we have been learning a lot about each other this year. But there is still a lot to learn, and if I know anything about us, I know this—we always seem to learn the hard way.  We’re too stubborn for our own good.

cinderslut tile (2)For this Condition of the Month I revisited a post from almost a year ago, in which I discussed my conflicted feelings about the crazy conservative politics of my current host country, namely their cultural mandate that women should cover themselves from head to toe in black shapeless gowns whenever they leave their homes. I’ve now been wearing my abaya for going on a year and a half now (at least whenever I leave the safe confines of our compound), so I have conformed to this culture as much as I am willing to. In my previous post I talked about how women who went so far as to cover their entire faces with a veil or cover their hands with black gloves weirded me out. Well, that is still true. Recently I’ve been doing some classroom observations in the local high school, and I’ve met several girls who wear a full abaya, headscarf, and veil to school every single day. This shocked me, because at the school I taught at last year things were decidedly more Western, and almost none of the girls even wore their abayas on school grounds.

So what’s my point? Well, comparing how I feel about some of these cultural norms now to what I wrote about last October, I’d say I’m getting less tolerant, not more. Often when I’m out and about I find myself feeling a burning twinge of annoyance at the way all females in this country have to conform, regardless of their own personal beliefs. I’ve heard stories of 11-year-old girls being berated in the mall for not being covered, and I’ve seen first-hand that covering doesn’t even always protect a woman from the unwanted stares and lewd attention of men. Most of all, I wish it didn’t have to be black! There’s undeniable symbolism there, if you ask me. It’s not okay for women to be modestly dressed in hot pink abayas, or tie dye, or lace, or beautifully patterned abayas. No, they have to be black, colorless, devoid of identity. This is a place that fears female empowerment, and that is something I just know I won’t be able to abide forever.

little merskank tileWell, in a lot of ways my life is still much the same as it was this time last year.  I am still a graduate student, lacking a ‘real’ job, and living off of black beans.  But I still love what I study and am excited about getting to do what I do everyday.  Looking back over the past year, one of the biggest changes, at least so far as my blog posts are concerned is that I am no longer writing about a certain guy.  Do you all remember Herman?  He was the one who was sort of a jerk to Mareena in my fictionalized romance-novel style account of my love life.  But for some reason I really had a hard time getting over him.  I remember writing a post about being Stuck on Rewind, and how our relationship felt like this circular presence in my life:  I wanted to escape from it but I didn’t know how to move on.  And really, things were like that for about a year.  It felt like a really long time, but now it’s about nine months after I wrote that post and I am glad to say, I hardly ever think of Herman.  I haven’t seen him all summer (and Oxford summers are really long) but I am pleased to say that I am neither excited nor worried about seeing him again.  Basically: I am no longer stuck on rewind, and it feels really good.  Besides, he was a jerk anyway

sleeping booty tileWhat?!  No post from the Booty?  Well, I guess we can forgive this once because she is off having amazing adventures in the Grand Canyon.  She better post all about it when she gets back though… otherwise we might kick her off the blog.  Just kidding of course!  We love you Booty and can’t wait to have your presence back among us!

UPDATE: Booty’s BACK! And if you think I’d miss out on answering this question you’re otta yo mind. This time last year I was unemployed, dealing with a loss of a grandparent and moving back in with my parents after years of living out of state. Now my life is the complete opposite since I’m gainfully employed at a company almost four times as long as I ever have been, watching my 99 year old grandpa’s health steadily improve and making plans to move out of my parent’s house in a few months. Instead of making the drive from Seattle to Utah like i did last year I’m hopping on a plan to get back to that emerald city for the first time since. It’s absurd how much can change in a year and while I really don’t feel all that different I also know I’ve learned so much about who I am and how I want to live my life. This time last year I had no plan, no idea what the next week or next moment of my life would bring and I HATED IT. Now I know some about what the next months of my life will be, but instead of dreading those unknowns, I’m excited for them. Anything can happen.