(no subject)
May. 9th, 2015 03:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressAt 6:56 this morning, I finally dragged my bleary ass upright. I have found checking my email early in the morning can help jumpstart the "actually awake" part of the day, so I glanced at my phone.
Just 7 minutes prior, Julie Parr had sent me an email with a subject line of "Unit 2/3 Results". Oh gods. I always thought I was going to be the last to know, that they were going to come while I was at work and not able to check my mail. I never dreamed I'd be the first to see 'em.
And I read the email...and it doesn't matter what it said, because I am only one person out of a team. The thing that matters is that my brilliant and talented dance-sibs made it, not me.
***
(An aside that I find fascinating: I have been having serious brainweasels about the fact that I have seemed to myself to be far more mean then I would like. It's not a matter of girl socialization per se so much as a wish, a desperate wisk, that I were a better hufflepuff. Being as I have been worried by this latent capacity for brusqueness in myself. (not cruelty, never intentionally cruel, but I have been impatient and more efficient lately than nice --some would find it admirable, I am not sure it's a change for the better, even as I recognize that nice should only be a baseline and is not as important as kind.)
So it was unexpected, and deeply reassuring, to realize that my empathy was in force in such a capacity as to make it actually impossible for me to think about my scores. All my anxiety and hope and fear and crossed fingers and whispered prayer (St Genesius, pray for us) was bound up in THEM. My classmates, my team, my family, my nakama. My own scores are irrelevant as long as THEY made it.
The depth of emotion I feel about this is astounding to me. If you ever wondered, I am not a sociopath. (If you've never wondered, suffice it to say I have.))
***
So there we go. Just short of 7 AM, I've pulled out the real keyoard (too important to type on the phone) and sent off the first email in the "congratulations/commiserations" thread. And then the hard part: Waiting.
At 9:30 AM, I'm standing in the copy room as the RISP whirrs. I check my email again.
All of us.
All five of us.
Both units, ten total exams out of ten, perfect score. We all made it.
I want to cry, and I don't, because that would be hard to explain even as a good thing what with the red eyes and runny nose. I also want to jump for joy, and I do because dear goddess, I am so happy and pleased for this and I've never really let the presence of other people dictate my reactions of happiness. The teachers standing by the main copier do not seem to notice, anyways.
We passed. We all passed. There are five new level one teachers in the Boston branch and they are us!
***
Every
Other
Saturday
For
Eight
Months
We hauled our collective asses to Stow, and if you're local and thinking "that's so far!" oh honey, Connie drove down from motherluvin' Burlington VT! Stephen and I had the short commute, "only" an hour each way to bracket our five plus hours of dancing.
In the weeks between those Saturdays, we read and read and read and read and wrote lesson plans and talked our dances and sent each other snarky texts and practiced our dancing at our own weekly classes --o gods, did we practice.
Hit your thirds, more extension, sink and surge, THIRDS, hands up, hands in, hands relaxed, DON'T LOSE THOSE THIRDS, turnout from the hip, lift from the ankles, tuck in the tuchas, you're still hitting third position, right?, make eye contact across the circle, cover across the set, smile at your partner, and don't forget this is fun, look like you're having fun!
(it was fun. It was also intense. The two states are not mutually exclusive.)
Maybe sometime I will scan and put up the weekly quizzes Gregor wrote for us, every week talking about more figures and our 12 candidacy dances to perform and how to teach better and dance better and BE better. They remain ridiculous, so much of the work remains ridiculous, but every single one of us passed and I can't speak ill of our training, not with that in mind.
I have not been so proud of myself since I realized I knew how to juggle. I am so, so happy words can't even say that our little congratulations party is going to be only that when we have it. I am looking even more forward to ESCape than previously, because daaaamn, we're all gonna be there and it's gonna be *great*.
I'm a certificated dance teacher. Fuck. Yes.
~Sor
MOOP!
(Of course, this is only my level 1, there's still 2 years and two more units before I get my level 2 and full teachership. It's okay, it'll come. I've been spending way too much time this week hyperfocused on the future. It is nice to think just about being happy with the present for a little while.)
Just 7 minutes prior, Julie Parr had sent me an email with a subject line of "Unit 2/3 Results". Oh gods. I always thought I was going to be the last to know, that they were going to come while I was at work and not able to check my mail. I never dreamed I'd be the first to see 'em.
And I read the email...and it doesn't matter what it said, because I am only one person out of a team. The thing that matters is that my brilliant and talented dance-sibs made it, not me.
***
(An aside that I find fascinating: I have been having serious brainweasels about the fact that I have seemed to myself to be far more mean then I would like. It's not a matter of girl socialization per se so much as a wish, a desperate wisk, that I were a better hufflepuff. Being as I have been worried by this latent capacity for brusqueness in myself. (not cruelty, never intentionally cruel, but I have been impatient and more efficient lately than nice --some would find it admirable, I am not sure it's a change for the better, even as I recognize that nice should only be a baseline and is not as important as kind.)
So it was unexpected, and deeply reassuring, to realize that my empathy was in force in such a capacity as to make it actually impossible for me to think about my scores. All my anxiety and hope and fear and crossed fingers and whispered prayer (St Genesius, pray for us) was bound up in THEM. My classmates, my team, my family, my nakama. My own scores are irrelevant as long as THEY made it.
The depth of emotion I feel about this is astounding to me. If you ever wondered, I am not a sociopath. (If you've never wondered, suffice it to say I have.))
***
So there we go. Just short of 7 AM, I've pulled out the real keyoard (too important to type on the phone) and sent off the first email in the "congratulations/commiserations" thread. And then the hard part: Waiting.
At 9:30 AM, I'm standing in the copy room as the RISP whirrs. I check my email again.
All of us.
All five of us.
Both units, ten total exams out of ten, perfect score. We all made it.
I want to cry, and I don't, because that would be hard to explain even as a good thing what with the red eyes and runny nose. I also want to jump for joy, and I do because dear goddess, I am so happy and pleased for this and I've never really let the presence of other people dictate my reactions of happiness. The teachers standing by the main copier do not seem to notice, anyways.
We passed. We all passed. There are five new level one teachers in the Boston branch and they are us!
***
Every
Other
Saturday
For
Eight
Months
We hauled our collective asses to Stow, and if you're local and thinking "that's so far!" oh honey, Connie drove down from motherluvin' Burlington VT! Stephen and I had the short commute, "only" an hour each way to bracket our five plus hours of dancing.
In the weeks between those Saturdays, we read and read and read and read and wrote lesson plans and talked our dances and sent each other snarky texts and practiced our dancing at our own weekly classes --o gods, did we practice.
Hit your thirds, more extension, sink and surge, THIRDS, hands up, hands in, hands relaxed, DON'T LOSE THOSE THIRDS, turnout from the hip, lift from the ankles, tuck in the tuchas, you're still hitting third position, right?, make eye contact across the circle, cover across the set, smile at your partner, and don't forget this is fun, look like you're having fun!
(it was fun. It was also intense. The two states are not mutually exclusive.)
Maybe sometime I will scan and put up the weekly quizzes Gregor wrote for us, every week talking about more figures and our 12 candidacy dances to perform and how to teach better and dance better and BE better. They remain ridiculous, so much of the work remains ridiculous, but every single one of us passed and I can't speak ill of our training, not with that in mind.
I have not been so proud of myself since I realized I knew how to juggle. I am so, so happy words can't even say that our little congratulations party is going to be only that when we have it. I am looking even more forward to ESCape than previously, because daaaamn, we're all gonna be there and it's gonna be *great*.
I'm a certificated dance teacher. Fuck. Yes.
~Sor
MOOP!
(Of course, this is only my level 1, there's still 2 years and two more units before I get my level 2 and full teachership. It's okay, it'll come. I've been spending way too much time this week hyperfocused on the future. It is nice to think just about being happy with the present for a little while.)