Update on Life

Dear Jimmy Higa. It is currently 9:30p in San Diego, making it 12:30a in New York. Technically Thursday for you, but still Wednesday for me, so I'm half keeping my promise. Here it goes.

I just returned from San Francisco, spending a month on the couch of my most generous and patient friends, and taking a teacher training course in Ashtanga Yoga at It's Yoga in San Francisco. How did I get there, you may ask? Well, its a curious story indeed.

For the previous 7 months, I was teaching not so encouraging middle and high school students at a private school in Solana Beach. Essentially, the schools attracts students who aren't succeeding in a typical school due to emotional, social, drug, or academic problems, and provides an one-on-one education. Seventeen 45 minute, one-on-one session constitute a full semester of high school _____ (I taught history, english, and spanish). For the first three months, I struggled, but didn't know if it was a simple act of adjustment to the new 40-hour work week, or to teaching, or if I simply was unhappy with my current situation. After the three months of pondering, I knew: I really didn't enjoy, or fundamentally, agree with what was going on at the school. I felt both the students and the teachers were disrespected and cheated out of healthy experiences. For the students, I didn't feel they were receiving a quality education. How can you understand a class when you have it for 45 minutes every other day, for two months total? As a teacher, I felt used. I was supposed to teach an entire chapter of history to a student who is already struggling, in 45 minutes. I was thinking: are you serious fool? In addition, we had no prep time through out the day, just consistent teaching. So a typical day went something like this: 8-845 7th grade English, 845-930: Spanish 2; 930-945: 15 minute break (one toilet/bathroom for entire office of 25 teachers and 50 students), 945-1030: World History; 1030-1115: Econ, 1115-1200: English Lit, 12-1230 lunch; 1230-115: Spanish 3... etc etc. As you can imagine, it was challenging to jump from subject to subject, age to age. While I was provided the template for the classes, I was given no time for my own prep. So as a teacher, I felt overworked, and undervalued. The philosophy, as I saw it, was to take twenty somethings, overwork them for however long they would stay around, and when they inevitably quit, hire someone new. Because I was semi-interested in the teaching profession, it did seem like a great opportunity to get my feet wet and see if it was something that I really wanted to pursue. And to be honest, it did give me that feedback, and I realized that surrounding myself with teenagers wasn't the best thing for my psyche, and I am free to say that I tried it, and I will be looking for something else thankyouverymuch। During the last few months that I was working at Fusion, I was also job searching, mostly in the bay area. While I had one heartbreakingly close call, I wasn't able to find a seem less transition job to new perfect job during that time.


Around January, I was talking to one of my most treasured friends, Miss Natasha Wilder, and she said every so perfectly (and I'm paraphrasing) we (Tom and I) really think you should quit your job. No one had said it to me so simply and directly, and after we talking about the benefits of freeing my energy up to new experiences and people, I was sold. Mind you, we had these conversations before. We've had lots of conversations before, but for some reason this one sentence really resonated with me. One night not long after this miraculous moment, it occured to me that I could take a month for myself, get certified in yoga, and apply to a job at American Specialty Health. Another wonderful friend has worked there for a year, and has consistently loved the work. One requisite for having your application considered, however, is to be a certified health something. So I figured, why not yoga? Ruthi asked the higher ups, and they said: groovy. Well, maybe that's not what they said exactly, but you get the idea. While there was no guarantee of a job, there was a possibility, and with that hope I searched the Internet quickly for Yoga Alliance Certified programs in the city (San Francisco that is) found one that looked legit, and literally sent in my deposit and bought my ticket without much hesitancy. It was pretty funny the first day of the training when we were discussing how we came to find It's Yoga. Most of my colleagues had researched for months, and had numerous reasons why they had chosen this particular program. Myself, on the other hand, was hoping to find an actual studio and was quite impressed that it really existed.

And I'll leave you with a cliffhanger. I'm currently in a coffee shop using their internet, as my source at home has disappeared because the true owners moved out and I can't use the open network "hoochiemother" any longer. Tom and I are leaving super early tomorrow for Pennsylvania for the weekend, visiting his dad and family for the first time (for me anyways). I'm excited about this blog thing, and will continue when I return, I do promise.

Peace,
Blair