My Education, part 2: Homeschooling with My Mother

Luckily for my brother and me we did not begin our education in public school, where we both would have been stuck with labels that could have damaged his sense of self worth and my easily inflated ego irreparably. My mother decided to teach us at home after I had attended I believe a couple of months of first grade. I wasn’t a problem student, and I remember having fun with classmates, but I wasn’t happy there and she wasn’t happy with the methods and especially the priorities that are employed in public schools.

We spent our days learning, and mostly trying not to label it too carefully. I don’t have very clear memories separating years except when we moved between houses when I was seven or eight years old. My mother worked hard to make sure we were learning things in all of the subjects we would have been taught in school, mostly so she could record this and keep us officially official. She was always flexible and happy if we had our own ideas about what or how to study. I remember being delighted to learn one year that  a person could read about a subject and then write down what they had learned and then, if one provided a name or some designation of topic, other people would be happy to read it—I had discovered essays! I proceeded to write I think thirty-two of them that year (as I have said before, I was very fond of numbers and of documenting my accomplishments). Most of these were a short paragraph or two long. One was entitled “Dolls” and I believe was the result of original research. The longest was on King Tutankhamen, for which I drew my own reconstruction of the Nile on our computer.

My mother was also very considerate of our different learning needs, which along with our age difference (which is only a year and a half, but a year and a half can be a big deal in grade school) required a lot of creativity and careful thought. Isaac, as I began to describe in my last post, is I think a kinesthetic, visual, aural learner. He could listen to my mother read to him for very long periods of time as long as he had something to do with his hands, and would remember just about everything he had heard. I loved to be read to as well, but more often needed to stop doing anything else so I could focus on seeing what was being described or just the words themselves in my mind. 

Most of my memories of day to day learning are by myself, with frequent projects with Mom and Isaac. We spent a lot of time in parks talking about biology and ecology. We spent time with craft projects, often in a weeklong craze that petered out rather abruptly. Mom bought a loom and I learned to weave. I journaled and thought about my mind. I read books—sitting in the branches of trees when possible.

Learning this way taught me to respect my mind and to take responsibility for what I was learning. I decided myself how best to test what I was learning (for things like math, anyway, which I felt benefitted from checking to see what I remembered. Many things, like vocabulary and history, can just be re-looked up if you really need to know them and find you have forgotten) I would wait until at least a week had past since I had studied a chapter and then do as many of the questions at the end as I could. If I ended up getting more than fifty percent, I was proud. I knew that I had really internalized this knowledge, and was not just parroting back things I managed to keep in my short-term memory. These skills of knowing my mind, knowing how to learn something and how to check if I had have served me well all my life.

My Education, part 1: Isaac and My Mind

My younger brother has always been a touchstone for me in thinking about education, though I'm sure it would surprise him to read that. And I think he would be surprised for the same reason I try to always keep him in mind: His brain does not work the same way mine does. His mind (from what I understand) functions mostly in pictures and sounds. He is very good at putting things together and at making them look the way he wants to. He is good at showing ideas visually. I am not. I function in words and numbers, primarily. I love to read and I am very good at math. This also means that I am very good at tests, especially those lovely bubble tests I took every year starting in elementary school.

Isaac, you might guess, is not so good at those kinds of tests. He learned to read quite late, and even after he did so, expecting him to derive some concept from flat black words on a flat gray page and then find the appropriate flat black words from the list provided wasn’t an appropriate way to measure what his mind was capable of.  He could and can get decent scores and decent grades, but most of the ways that students’ minds are traditionally measured miss the majority of his intelligence.

He suffered emotionally for the immeasurability of his mind beginning when he was quite young. I was held up as an ideal little brain, loving to read books and work with numbers. Most of the things that Isaac was motivated about were dismissed as games or hobbies, and not the stuff of ‘real’ education. I wasn’t usually convinced that the books I read were building my mind more effectively than the drawing of creatures and construction of scenes with legos or other toys on which Isaac spent his time. I was honestly often embarrassed when I tried to do what he did—he understood things about how shapes could fit together to make something unexpected that I could not keep up with—his creations were consistently more interesting than mine on multiple levels.

I was eternally conflicted about the different ways our intelligences were treated. I was made accustomed at a very early age to being thought of as the ‘smarter’ and often simply ‘better’ sibling. Most of the time I knew that that wasn’t true, but that knowledge by itself wasn’t always enough to make me unhappy hearing it, as least as far as I myself was concerned. I lived on praise. I did hate the way I could see it made Isaac feel, and because of this I sometimes resolved not to tell my family of something ‘admirable’ that I had done. I would conceal the fact that I had already finished a novel or how quickly I was getting through my math workbook. Sadly for both of us (and especially Isaac) my resolve did not often outlast my need for positive attention.

Even a step further outside of measurable education are our emotional compositions. Another thing that made it easy for adults to praise me was my retreating and people-pleasing nature. I tried to get out of the way or change the topic of conversation and make conflict unnecessary. Isaac did not. I often thought he was unreasonable, and he could definitely be disobedient, but he maintained a principle within himself of not abandoning things that mattered to him I have always admired and envied.

A new year

I was in Seoul when my grandmother passed away, on my way to visit Xiaoxuan and her family for the Lunar New Year in China. I felt very far away and it still (two weeks later) doesn't feel very real, though I have been trying to call my grandfather regularly to stay connected to him and this new reality.

I flew to from Seoul's Incheon Airport to Beijing Capital Airport a few hours later with no problems except a few minutes of tension as I realized I hadn't used my US debit card in months and wasn't sure how on earth I'd remember the PIN so I could withdraw money for a cab to go meet Shirin. My Jedi mind tricks, however, recovered it from the recesses of my mind on only the second try. The taxi driver proceeded to take me for a ride, as cab drivers in China universally don't feel bad about ripping off americans as we are so obviously rolling in money, but other than that the travel part of the day went well.

It was a very surreal week of travel, with my mind trying to adjust to being in a different country and often wishing that I was in the US. I kept Grandma and Grandpa in my thoughts and tried also to be present in the family gatherings that Xiaoxuan was kind enough to invite me to join.

At her father's parents' house I met aunts and uncles and a couple of cousins, and her cousin's two year old daughter, who really wasn't sure what to think of my at first but decided that I was alright after we spent some time drawing (read: scribbling randomly) together. We stayed up late watching the national dance/music/and sketch performances. We headed home around 11pm, I think, and after getting ready for bed it was just about midnight and we watch out of the bay window of Xiaoxuan's family's 8th floor apartment at the storm of fireworks in every direction. It was impressive. Everyone went to bed shortly after that, as we had to wake up extra early to return to her paternal grandparents' house to eat new year's dumplings and set off a few fireworks of our own.

Grandma's funeral was New Year's Day in China. I spent the day (except for breakfast) with Xiaoxuan's maternal extended family-- her mother's parents and brother. We ate well, of course, and her grandfather showed me a VERY complicated puzzle which I was not able to solve. I played Mazhang with Xx, her mother, and her grandmother. I lost, of course, but I held my own. Her father asked me if Americans just don't like humor because I hadn't been getting all of his jokes. I told him we did, but I am rather slow on the uptake in Chinese language conversations. He remains skeptic.

That night for me was the time of Grandma's funeral, as it was in the early afternoon in Iowa. I said prayers and thought about my family alone after everyone else was asleep-- I had talked to Xiaoxuan about Grandma a couple of times but mostly was still processing by myself. It was a gift to be welcomed into a family that week, strange though it was that it wasn't my own family in Iowa.

My heart is often in Iowa

My grandparents have had an extremely difficult year, and after finally moving back in with my grandfather for less than a week, my grandmother is back in the hospital. She has always planned on "getting to 90 and then slowing down," and did just turn 90 last month. She has been incredibly brave in a year of being moved back and forth, from her home to the hospital to an assisted living home to a nursing home, another nursing home. I think that she and my grandfather have spent more time living in separate places this year than they have together, which would be unfair any year but is unbearable to think about as the list of things her body is surviving keeps getting longer.

It breaks my heart to be on the other side of the world while they are both facing things they shouldn't face alone, with only my thoughts and love and too-infrequently my voice in Iowa. But I am wary of the short trips home I might be able to finagle with my brief vacation days-- I don't want to have to leave before I feel like I'm home and lose the buffer-money that will be letting me stay in Ames when I do get there, almost certainly at the end of July. I have been trying to decide if this is wisdom or selfishness, and am not sure. In any case, my heart is in Iowa.

1am, and I am in transit again

Not a complaint, though the thought of finding a place to live in for more than a year at a time makes me ache a bit. I'm getting pretty good at packing, getting pretty good at not being attached to belongings and being ready to let things go, and I love always having new things to discover and new people to meet. But I would love to make some friends and know they will be around, that I will be around. That we might celebrate each others' birthdays more than once together.

That's a pretty angsty thought, given that before this year I lived in Iowa City for five years, and that before that I had lived my whole life in Iowa. But living around college students is a constant transition of relationships. Everyone is still deciding who they are and where they are going, and holding on to any one person too tight risks losing yourself.

We had our HNC commencement ceremony this afternoon. It was really nice. I have been so caught up in disappointment in myself, frustrated that I have been struggling so much with my own things (I am full of FEELINGS and sometimes it's a problem) and not taking full advantage of where I am that I have often lost sight of what a unique program I am in this year. I received (in an unashamedly fusia cover) a joint certificate in Chinese Studies from Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. Stephen Roach, the Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and Zhang Yibin, Nanjing U's liberal arts vice president, were our commencement speakers. My classmates are truly warmhearted and have a lot of vision and commitment. I know that I personally really need a break to figure out how I want to use this experience, as well as my undergrad degrees, but this has been an incredible place to be. I am qualified to call myself a China expert, of sorts anyway.

I am looking forward to traveling and being around people I love in the next month and a half, and very much looking forward to the reflection and clarity of mind that both of those things bring me. Next year is going to be a more personally focused one. I am hoping to write a lot (knock on wood; if I set myself up with expectations now I'll drown in them by august) and clear my mind out a bit. Hopefully one of my next entries will begin to outline possible writing for the next year. I'm looking forward to it.

Love!

Quick Update

Among my methods of schoolwork procrastination has been changing my mind repeatedly about my summer plans, and obsessively looking up plane tickets on vayama.com. These culminated tonight in the purchase of a round-trip ticket from Seoul to Des Moines and back- putting me in Iowa or thereabouts from Tuesday, July 6th until Sunday, August 1st.

Hope I'll be seeing you soon!

Dragonfly out in the sun, you know what I mean

My dinner in the cafeteria this evening consisted of a dish of spicy eggplant, a dish of squid/celery/carrot, a bowl of rice, and a square of apple pie. My dishsoap has a pretty standard lotus scent, and I have been eating a lot of seaweed-flavored saltines.

I have in the last few days completely made up my mind, at various time, that I am definitely going to Korea to teach English, that I am going to put all possible effort into the Sichuan teaching fellowship, and that I am definitely going to find some way to stay in Nanjing next year. I have come much closer to figuring out my rubric, at least. I need to be somewhere I feel I am building meaningful relationships. I don't really need (almost don't want) to be advancing my career next year, as I need to have space to figure out where I'm going next. I have been pushing through this education thing for quite a while, and I think I need to stop and look where I'm headed before I keep pushing any longer. I feel good about my educational decisions (well. I'm less than ecstatic about the loans I'm accruing here through Hopkins, but I'll survive). I feel good about my International Studies/Environmental Science degree, good about my trips abroad, good about the time I spent working with rain gauges, good about this year in China (and what it will tell people about my stubborn ability to sit through lectures I don't comprehend, if nothing else).

I'm struggling to make a decision about next year that I am sure is about what I want and not about expectations I am imposing on myself. I keep thinking that I will accomplish this one more thing (have a job, graduate from college, speak Chinese) and then I will be happy with myself. I am finding that contentment comes with motion, with getting up every day and feeling good about what I am doing, with having meaningful relationships and knowing that I help to deepen them. I am trying to figure out what that means about where I should be next year. Maybe I should go to Korea where I will be best able to focus on my relationship with Christian, as well as teach children. Maybe I should stay in China and take advantage of this time to build relationships in this country and in this language. Maybe I should go back home and take advantage of this time to be with family before my life solidifies somewhere else (I did actually just check some job listings in Ames... doesn't look hopeful).

In the more tangible here and now, my cold is still lingering on but I feel much much better. The air quality here makes it harder to get over respiratory illnesses, I think. I read in the China Law Blog (which is probably, but not definitely, reliable) that breathing the air in Beijing is NOT as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day; that rumor is an exaggeration. It is as bad as LIVING with someone who smokes a pack a day. I've heard Nanjing is just about the same as Beijing overall. Some days better and some days worse. (Christian happened to arrive a couple days after the worst pollution day on record.)

My weekend was lovely. I spend time with Shirin and some Chinese parents and nine year old kids on Saturday, ending with going out for hotpot in the evening. Sunday morning I started tutoring the young couple I met last weekend who will be moving to the East coast for school in the fall. They are just lovely, so it was a great start to the day. Over lunch, Shirin joined me for a talk by a representative of a Chinese NGO, set up by some fellow Center classmates.

My head's still spinning with thoughts about what I should do... still trying to quiet down long enough to see my options clearly... Wish me luck.

Also! Last night, instead of continuing to do my homework, I stumbled upon and watched in full a documentary called Darius Goes West. It's about a boy with Muscular Dystrophy who drove from Georgia to California with 11 of his friends to try to get his wheelchair on Pimp My Ride. It was very moving, and I heartily recommend it. Also, if anyone is ever looking for a gift for me, I'd be all about the "golslabi" T-shirt for sale on their MD research fundraising site.

Today's title is from Nina Simone's "I'm Feeling Good," which I was first introduced to through Muse's cover.

[Austin said I haven't been posting enough. Here you go, friend]

If I turn into another// Dig me up from under what is covering// The better part of me

I am still working on being open and present, in my day to day relationships and in the deeper relationships with friends and family that may only surface in too-infrequent emails and phone calls and holidays, but offer a mirror of my progress and a reminder of who I am.

I am still working to put all the pieces of myself together. To see who I have been and who I am and who I want to be. I struggle sometimes with the self I see reflected in others. For instance, after my parents' divorce it was hard for me to interact with quite a few people who'd known me for a long time. They (you) saw the same person they had seen before, but all the pieces of me had come apart and I didn't know for a long time which ones to keep. I had defined myself by my family's life together, by our house and neighborhood, by the fact that I homeschooled, by the time I had for my friends, and I lost those things. It took a while for me to get my feet under me again, and even after I did old relationships were often a sharp reminder of how much had changed. This has been true of other transitions since then, though to a lesser extent. I change and want to move on, and don't always know how to interact with people I knew before.

I don't want that to stay true. I don't want to see my own struggles in your faces. I am learning to define myself as the intersection of all of your lives, as this beautiful point of opportunity to learn from you and share something of what I see. I am learning to look forward to the worlds of people and experiences I have ahead of me.

One of the clearest things I feel about my own identity is the necessity of travel. I didn't apply to ISU because I grew up in Ames, I grudgingly stayed in state for the tuition, and did not even consider staying in the US after I graduated. I don't have anything against the US, but it just felt wrong to be there last year and seriously added to the stress of my last year at UIowa. As much as I am struggling with my classes and my self this semester, I am definitely on the right continent.

In school news again, yesterday I wrote almost 1,000 characters of my civil law paper on the way that the Stubborn Nail House owners (钉子户） (who refuse to move when the government licenses their land for development) and their treatment in the media signal the recent developments in civil society in China. Woohooooo. I have done very little today.

Today's title brought to you by Dig by Incubus
Today's almost title #1 brought to you by 23 by Jimmy Eat World (I felt for sure last night// That when we said goodbye// No one else will know these lonely dreams)
Today's almost title #2 brought to you by Wasting Time by Jack Johnson (Nobody knows anything about themselves// 'Cause they're all worried about everybody else)

Countdown to Christian: 24 days (24, Christian Yetter! Fools round down!)

i'm just a little bug who tries real hard

I am not in Wuxi! But I have a ticket for tomorrow morning, so I will have to stop sitting around and being a lame-o by 9:06am or I will have wasted 54 yuan.

I have been having trouble getting myself going, and kind of letting little things pile up. I am currently trying to figure out how to get a package from Fedex, but so far have been unable to find anyone who know their number, or where I might look for it. I have sent an email to a member of our super helpful administrative staff, and hopefully that works out. I just finally added money to the sim card on my cell phone, so I can keep making phone calls without worrying about it. I am going to do one final revision of my SOP and then finish Berkeley's application- it's due Tuesday! Ahh!

A friend knocked on my door an hour or so ago and said that through a professor's student she was being interviewed in Chinese about Thanksgiving and wondered if I would join her. I did, I told them that I generally eat food and hang out with family on Thanksgiving, and that what I am most thankful for are all the wonderful people in my life. Then they took some footage of Anna and I reading and writing Chinese, to make their segment more impressive.

And here I am, back again! I am gonna do some homework. For serious.

(oh, and my title refers to Morris)

By the hand (hand)- take me by the hand, pretty mama!

I am so grateful for all of the people in my life. I tend to keep people farther away than I really mean to; I am only an occasional member (I feel) of most of the friend groups/communities that are important to me. This is usually the way I mean to be; I try to be there with people when I know I can sincerely care and pay attention to them the way they deserve, and give myself space when I need to. It's also sometimes the way I can't help being. I run into an inner wall pretty consistently that doesn't allow me to say what I mean, or at least makes me wring my hands and say what I mean falteringly. I've noticed that this happens much more often when I begin to judge my life by my ego, by how much I or other people approve of me rather than seeing the things that are happening in the world and in my life and doing the best I can with them.

At the same time, this distance is not just ego or just cowardice. I grew up in a pretty emotionally dysfunctional environment, and I can feel myself starting to cross a line into dependency on specific relationships into ground that isn't healthy (this line having little or nothing to do with the actions of the other person). I am so much happier and healthier, more confident and more comfortable with who I am than I was not all that long ago; I know I am going in good directions, but I do still need to keep track of myself.

It occurs to me that this topic is almost too personal for a public blog, but I'm assuming that if you've taken the time to read this you've probably encountered my emotional wall (it generally manifests in blank stares and noncommittal mutterings, until I find time and space to myself to untangle my thoughts) at some point or another. I'm taking it apart, but it's pretty tenacious. I am so grateful for all the caring, patient, intelligent and meaningful relationships in my life that help me to understand myself and the world a little better every day.

Hm. That wasn't really a travel topic, either. Except that trying to understand the challenges that I bring into relationships with people close to home, without the stresses of being in a new place and far away from my usual support system, will pretty definitely help me to have meaningful and not flailing and frustrated relationships in China next year.

How far we've come

A good conversation this afternoon ('this afternoon being a couple of weeks ago, by the time I'm actually posting this) has left me thinking about where I have come from, mentally, emotionally, and culturally, and where I am going.

The more I reflect on it, the more I feel I have been lucky in almost every way possible in my background. I have been loved, educated, challenged, and allowed my independence both from family and friends (while keeping meaningful relationships) and from American culture at large.

Being raised Baha'i and homeschooled (why does no writing software ever recognize any form of this as a word? Is it two?) forced me to make decisions about how I defined myself and who I wanted to be. I couldn't just take on standard values and identities, because they simply were not offered to me. Sure, I played dress up, played with Barbies, and watched cartoons, but always with guidance about gender roles being unnecessary, ridiculous body images being unhealthy, and the knowledge that if I watched one show I wouldn't be able to see any others as my daily TV allowance was only half an hour. I defined myself by my family, my friends, and what I experienced of the world through their stories and my eyes.

I have also been reflecting that my parents' divorce and the challenges we faced individually and as a family in the aftermath were vital for me to become who I am. I am sure there are less traumatic ways I could have become who I want to be, but I am not sure that I would have taken advantage of them. I was left with fears and insecurities I may have been able to avoid given a different life story. But if I had not been forced to take apart my identity and evaluate all the pieces one by one I think it is much more likely that I would still have those faults, and have lost only the ability to name them.

This leads me to a quote of 'Abdu'l-Baha's, that "the mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly like until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not heading out looking for ways to suffer. I am frustrated enough as it is by all of the ways that I hold myself back by remembering past unhappiness. But I will not pass by opportunities merely because they promise difficulty or challenge of whatever kind. I am terrified of how far away I am going to feel in China next year, and how long that year will be. I still define myself in large part by the people in my life and how they help me to see myself. I am blessed to have a number of deep friendships which have lasted a decade or more, and a number of newer ones I can only hope will last that long. I know that I and these friendships will survive the next year. I have a tightness in my stomach thinking about it because I'm not sure how, but I am sure that I will grow and that growth can only help me to deepen friendships.

In conclusion: I love you!