If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would it be?
WordPress is really harping on our younger selves…if we could go back and tell them one thing…yesterday it was what would our younger selves be proud of…the question today is not much different. However, after what I worked on yesterday, I’m going to go ahead and answer this. Previously I have said that my younger self could receive advice from me, but she’s not going to follow it. She’s going to do whatever she wants regardless of what advice she gets. However, I’ve always thought back to my teenage self. This time, I’m only going back about six years. That is younger after all.
Yesterday, it was a cold, rainy day here in North Carolina. Fall finally arrived and it was glorious. The 90 degree days have finally ended, hopefully until next year, and so we spent much of the day inside. And while we were inside, we were not at all productive. I did a lot of reading on the couch. While Josh surfed the web in our creative space back room, I decided to cross something off on my ‘after grad school’ to-do list. I pulled my teacher scrapbook off the shelf and got out the box of teacher/school themed stickers and embellishments I have had for years. I had about 10 pages left to put together.
This scrapbook has at least one or two pages for every year I was a teacher. There are class pictures, some candid photos from field trips, mementos, pictures kids have drawn for me, and my favorite, thank you notes from the parents and students. The 10 pages I had left to do all had the pictures and notes in the sleeves. All I had to do was pick out the paper, layout all the pieces, stick them down, and add some stickers.
Around the sixth page, I took a break to go to the grocery store with Josh. On the way out of the store, he asked me what was wrong with me today. I told him my anxiety had kicked up. Instead of asking me why, as he usually does, he said it was because I was working on my scrapbook from “that school”. He was right, of course. But at that point, I only had a few more pages left to finish so I pushed through the anxiety and finished.
I put that scrapbook back on the shelf with a finality that felt like closure. I thought about getting it back down so I could take a picture of one of the pages for this post, but, it’s staying on that shelf for a while.
But that’s what brings me to today’s prompt. That scrapbook gave me anxiety because ‘that school’ was my anxiety origin story. If I could give advice to the teacher I was six years ago, I’d tell her not to become a principal. Say no a third time and mean it. The principal that created my anxiety was going to leave whether I becamse her replacement or not. I could continue being a teacher, which I loved, and just get to know a new principal.
Or, my advice could be to not become a principal and quit right then. From what I know about the new principal that came after me, he’s pretty awful. A complacent, non-follow-through kind of awful. Not good for a principal.
My life on the other side of being a teacher/principal is pretty awesome. Starting it earlier would have been nice. But of course, that brings up the whole thing about needing to go through an experience. That year as a principal did something to me. I learned a lot about what I’m willing to put up with and what my boundaries are. Would I have learned those same lessons if I quit before ever becoming a principal? Probably not. Or maybe I would have learned it in a different way. Perimenopause would still eventually show up and that has definitely taught me a thing or two.
Again, everything happens for a reason, and our younger selves probably wouldn’t listen to us regardless of the age we’re getting the advice. But it’s always interesting to think about what could have been if we could give advice and we actually took it.
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