I’ve figured out the cause of the stress over the last couple of weeks – it’s secondary stress caused by too much identification with my students as they work through their problems in their projects. I’m stressed because I know how much they have to work through, as I’m helping them solve their problems. And I’m also stressed because I know that I have to push them even harder if they want to get a good product out on deadline.
I need to step back, take a deep breath, and relax.
And I realise that it’s not my job to solve all my students’ problems for them. Nor is it my job to ensure that they get a pleasant and interesting experience out of this course, and leave with good feelings and much accomplishment. My job is to Assist the Teacher, as a Teaching Assistant. It may be my desire to help out as much as I can, but it’s my duty to let them go through this period and learn for themselves, experience the stress for themselves, and make their own decisions on how much time, effort and motivation they are willing to dedicate to this project. By stepping in to help all the time, I not only lose my own sense of objectivity, but also may be making my students less-equipped to handle the real world stresses and taking away their free will.
Ultimately, my job is not to make sure that every student succeeds, nor is it to make sure every students learns something. My job is to teach certain lessons. Learning and succeeding must come from a conscious choice by the students themselves, or else it has no value. I’m not very good at showing “tough love”, but I think that’s something I must learn to do next semester, or I’ll get emotionally-swamped under again like I did this semester. But I think I should be open and honest about it – I will announce to the students beforehand so that they know this is what to expect from me, rather than just acting that way and letting students think that I’m just mean by nature.
But yet, looking at them, at the amount of work and stress they go through, and based upon my own memories of projects I did when I was a student, I can’t help but feel sorry for them. What a sad world we live in, that we must stress and burden ourselves so much in order to succeed. I wish our academic system isn’t so achievement-focused. And yet, this is what the industry and business world demands. It’s the product of the capitalistic society, where the Darwinian law rules in the free market economies of talent and money. In a sense, our students right now are still ’sheltered’ in academia, because they haven’t been exposed to the full harshness of the working world’s struggle to survive. And so, I have no choice but to prepare them for the system.
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”
- Genesis 3:17-19, The Bible (NKJV) -
Never has the curse of struggle and conflict in work laid upon mankind due to Adam’s sin been more apparent to me until now. The “survival of the fittest” rules which cause so much grief to so many in the world today came about as a direct result of sin’s curse. Oh, how I wish I could turn socialist or communist. But they don’t work as governance systems unless a Perfect Being is ruling at the top, and people who don’t exhibit “human nature” (i.e. self-centredness) are helping to govern. Have to wait until Jesus’ return and the Millennium Reign before we can see a perfect socialist/communist state that lives up to their ideals. Until then, I have no choice but to live in a capitalistic world and propagate the system in the classroom to the young people I’m teaching.
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