Tentative First Steps

I attended my first conference solo this week (ok, so it was a colloquium, which IS different, but let's toss that aside for the time being). I was slightly apprehensive with a sense of anxiety I expressed physically through a tight and heavy feeling in my throat. It is a vague anxiety, like a shadow of an emotion you just can't quite express or shake off. I confronted this by talking through it a few days earlier with friends, and admitting that stepping out on my own was difficult, actually made these feelings seem less nebulous and easier to contain. It occurred to me that I needed to admit I like routines, organization, structure, and social situations which are comfortable. Yet I have to force myself out of security and encounter situations that will help me to continue to grow.

As I traveled to Ohio, I thought about the journey of the last four years and the number of times I had to step away from what I was comfortable with and confront some of my own perceptions and perspectives. I realized that even though there was some anxiety involved with being alone at a conference to talk about teaching music education in higher education, it was much more subdued than it was two years ago when I went to Virginia for a similar colloquium. I have changed quite a bit in the last four years! Perhaps this is a metamorphosis, though never complete, I will look back on later and understand much more clearly.

I realized before our first meeting that I knew few people, and those I did know, I knew only through their work or brief introductions at other conferences. It was up to me to introduce myself again and insert myself into the established social groups. It was wonderful to be asked to join a dinner party right away, and find the conversation easy and accepting from the beginning. As I have found in the circle of higher ed music teacher educators, this is not atypical behavior. I would venture to say there appears to be less posturing than I felt in the public school teaching settings, and less of a clique. I find my colleagues to be warm, receptive, and willing to listen more than they talk. For the most part anyway! So there were only a few moments that I actually felt socially-inept or awkward through the four days I spent there.

Here is the really interesting part for me. As I am eternally interested in the way we construct our identities in these settings, I started to discuss the difficulties one has becoming part of the larger profession from a personal standpoint. This particular colloquium has established a community of learners, and has broken down barriers to participation in the group. However, every profession has established traditions of acceptance into the profession that are both articulated and unarticulated. The nice thing was that I felt accepted enough to call on the ways in which I feel, coming in the fringes of the profession since I first entered teaching as a neophyte over 3o years ago! And in that moment, there was a connection from many in my discussion circle and beyond, showering me with viewpoints that were both profound and personal. This was quite assuring to me but also got me thinking about how we share our own induction experiences with those on their own journeys in.

Understand that this transition is not one where I feel unaccepted or unappreciated. I do not feel that I can not or will not fit into the profession. I understand from life experiences that it takes time to walk the walk and learn the ropes so that I may feel I am a part of my new peer group. Yet it was this experience that made me begin to reflect on what my preservice teachers experience as they are inducted into the profession. As I take this journey into higher education full-time, I need to be aware of the ways in which I negotiate the path of a new job, where my skills may or may not serve me well, and how I adapt to these demands, and how this can inform how I share lessons from these experiences with my students. Or ways through which I can help them develop the resilience to learn for themselves.

And today on the way home, I thought about my fears. Are they really that different than the fears of the students I teach? Fears of 'will my peers accept me?', 'Do I know enough?', Is what I know enough?', or 'Will someone figure out I don't always know what I am doing?' Perhaps I travel through those thoughts at lightening speed compared to my students, but they are there under the surface. It has given me food for thought, and an impetus to continue to document the journey. And today, I am very thankful that the professionals I met this weekend not only opened the door, but invited me in.

Emerson and Tiny Matters

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Every so often I have a small fit of anxiety. I don't recognize it until I am fully into the moment! It is triggered by something very small and insignificant...like disorganized boxes, unfinished jobs on the to-do list, or a computer issue. Whatever the trigger is - it isn't the problem really...the problem is always something else. I should know. I find and correct problems for a living!

You see, as a musician, we become adept at finding the problems, from the most major mistakes to the very tiniest of issues, in order to make an attempt at expressing that which is impossible to describe with words. We pick things apart, we put them back together, we slow it down, we change it out, and we experiment in expression. But in seeking out the minutia, I wonder if I fail to celebrate the technical or musical issues we have conquered - do I forget to actually revel in any success? I seem to live in this strange world of dissatisfaction, always seeking the next performance, that level of perfection that eludes me. That might be an accurate description of many of us, musician or not.

Today's anxiety is drawn from the well of another life change. A new job, a new town, a new home also means leaving my current job, current town, current home, and most importantly my friends. It probably also comes with the territory of completing the massive document of a dissertation. The euphoria has worn off and the shiny, bright words I placed so carefully on the page have now settled into a comfortable hum in the back of my brain. And I realize that I have a sense of impatient dissatisfaction with not having anything ready to submit to a journal, or a research study set and ready to go. And by ready, I mean by tomorrow. I feel rather adrift and unfocused, excited about the future, but apprehensive as well. And I wonder if this is the result of the process I have just completed, or the years of musical training, begging me to dissect what I have just done and examine the pieces to be sure to approach the next performance with more something, even as I have no idea what that is.

I know that I am not alone when I suffer apprehension about new situations...will they like me? Will they accept me? And when I consider a new teaching situation I worry...will I be effective? Will I be able to reach my students and help them achieve their dreams? And when I place words on a page in the future, I am now on my own, without my "support team" in the next hallway...what if what I write isn't acceptable to the profession? What if I don't really have all that much to say? (My siblings are now laughing hysterically, but perhaps those who didn't endure my incessant adolescent chatter will relate.)

Perhaps Emerson is right. What lies within us is not the minutia to tear apart, but is the work of writing a symphony. The daily work of confronting our doubts, insecurities, or fears, helps build that courage muscle to place those technical passages of life into rhythmic order, and allow our the melody of our lives to sing more beautifully from within. All this practicing with critiquing what is behind us and thinking about what is before us actually provides the practice room for creating what is within us. And maybe, just maybe, I am built more like Beethoven, writing a symphony in a painstaking manner, rather than a Mozart, whose symphonies seemed to flow from another realm. I rather like thinking of myself as a late bloomer, one who has had the opportunity to write a few lovely little ditties for herself before finding her own symphony to write. And even if I am the only one who recognizes the harmonies, a little dissonance only makes for a wonderful resolution!

Rather than fighting these feelings, I am going to try to embrace them. What a gift the last four years have been! It is simply time to put that to use, and celebrate the changes within that have inspired me to continue on my path. I can take the time to center myself, figure out what I am truly feeling. Quiet the critical voice and listen more closely to the symphony I am creating inside.

Seeking wisdom....

So whenever I have faced major life changes, I start to have weird dreams. You know the kind - the ones that you can't shake after you wake up - or the ones where you simply can't decide whether you want to wake up when you are in them!

I haven't dreamed of my grandfather since his death. I adored all my grandparents, but I was born on my grandfather's birthday and somehow that made our relationship much more significant. It very well would have been anyway, as I was the first grandchild, but those are the cards that were dealt. The last dream I had of him was the evening of his death and was one of those dreams I shared with a friend because it was so significant to me at the time.

Since then, Grandpa has been absent from my dreams until last night. I dreamed Mark & I went in search of my grandparents, and we found Grandpa Swank. I can't tell you much more than that, except that I remember the feeling of having found him again. It was glorious! Of course, we eventually knew we had to go, and I cried and cried, not wanting to leave. He walked me down a stretch of beach and kept telling me I had the answers and not to worry - everything would be fine and work out just as it should. He smiled and waved and walked away. I, however, looked back at him and ahead to where my husband stood waiting, and laid face down on the damp sand, wondering how my memories of my grandparents being gone could still feel so painful. I laid there crying, trying to remember all the details of their faces, remembering being little and having them hold me, the way they smelled, their voices...and yet, I knew I had to stand up. I just didn't want to!

Of course, then Mark woke me up saying I was snoring like a submarine! Interesting, since the ocean was in my dream...

So here is my analysis! I am not superstitious nor particularly religious, but I do believe that we seek answers to our 'issues' within our dreams. It is our mind's way of working out that which troubles us most. I can summarize the forthcoming move, the uncertainty of the future, though exciting, has me a bit on edge. Dreaming of grandparents is a way of searching for love, wisdom, guidance, and perhaps the safety of being a child and being cared for. I had to look up what beaches mean, as I am not a beach girl...and I do think that we are conditioned and certain symbols may be true within a culture. In dream interpretations, beaches may be symbolic of transitions...and the state of the ocean, symbolic of my own interpretation of this transition. Well, thank goodness the water was relatively calm and the sky was pleasant. I would say I am working through the changes coming at me in a good way. Seeking wisdom from those I care about in the real world, facing the changes with as much grace as I can muster, even when what I really want to do is lay down and cry a bit about it.

I remember a friend telling me that her experiences doing her Ph.D. work were part of a very special time in her life. I understand that completely now. In spite of the intellectual and personal dissonance that comes with growth as both an academic and a person, it has been a magical, wonderful time, full of much joy for me. The flip side of joy is despair, but there have been few moments of that. Maybe those are yet to come. But I must breach the bubble of safety to continue to grow, and I know this. I may not like it, as it means leaving people I have grown to love, admire, respect, and depend on. I suppose the dream means I have the wisdom I need to move forward, if I will just trust myself to do so.

So thanks to my loving family, once more, I find the grounding of my early years paying off dividends as I begin yet another chapter in my life. Now to figure out how to stop the snoring....