BABY STEPS

It has been exactly a month since I showed up in a brand new country, met a complete stranger at the airport, and then indefinitely moved in with an incredible Costa Rican family. Although my wheels have been turning everyday of this whirlwind of a journey and I have been taking more time than ever before to journal about my experiences and emotions, I haven’t felt like I had anything worth blogging about.

Scratch that. That’s the way I’ve been phrasing it, but I know that’s inaccurate. What I should really say is that these past weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster. One day I was hopeful and optimistic about a great job opportunity, the next I was sullenly looking through hundreds of completely unappealing job postings. One minute I was reprimanding myself for being a spoiled, single-minded gringa who isn’t willing to consider other options. The next moment I was reminding myself that I came here with a purpose—to teach and truly interact with the tico people, not sit in a call center answering telephone calls—and so it’s important that I stick to those principles. Through teaching, I know I can really utilize my gifts and have an impact on people and that’s what matters.  

Basically, I haven’t maintained one emotion or perspective for longer than a few hours; I certainly didn’t feel ready to sit down and blog. I didn’t have anything upbeat and inspiration to say (at least not that I still felt the next day when I had time to write). And I don’t consider myself to be a negative person so a downtrodden woe-is-me post was not what I had in mind— especially since I am incredibly blessed to be living in this country, soaking in a new culture, and growing in all sorts of new ways.  

So all that being said, I’m going to be frank with you— I have felt frustrated over the past month. I have felt lost in this dialect that is close to the one I’ve studied for the past 10 years, and yet didn’t feel the same at all. I have second-guessed my decision to come here, my ability to find a job, and my blind ambition overall. But I think I finally have a lasting response to all of that: baby steps.

It’s not a new concept, but it’s something I struggle with. I am used to things falling quickly into place. I am used to finding success with little obstruction. I am used to being the “perfect candidate” for the internships and programs that I desired and therefore being offered a position. But we can’t always be perfect. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that my life hasn’t followed a clear, one-track path to a specific goal. Sure, I can go back and arrange my experiences on a resume in a way that makes it look intentional, but for the most part it was not. I pursued what excited me in the moment and I am so glad that I did. But the result is that I have dipped my toes in the waters of many different pools instead of honing my skills in one particular area.

It doesn’t mean I’m not a great candidate to teach English here, but it means that I need to be humble and accept the fact that while my experiences have been relevant, they are not exactly what most employers are looking for. Working with Spanish-speaking people during my summer internship, reading to bilingual kindergarteners in Spanish, and teaching science classes to elementary school students in Spain are all helpful building-blocks but they do not mean that I am ready to jump into a structured, adult-level English course where no Spanish is spoken.  Sometimes we just have to admit to ourselves that we are not perfectly ready yet and graciously accept the assistance that others may offer us. 

That has been the case for me over the past few weeks. When I first found out about the New Learning Academy it seemed perfect— a professional language academy with a welcoming, friendly vibe located in a town closer to where I live than San José and (unlike everywhere else I had visited) they were currently hiring! My interview was set up within days and it went so well that the English Director was scheduling me for the teaching demonstration before I even left the interview. The day of the demonstration, however, didn’t go as smoothly. It wasn’t a disaster, but it also wasn’t perfect.  Accordingly, I was not surprised the next day when the director called me and explained they had decided to give the job to someone who had more experience working with adults. 

 I was surprised, however, to hear that they still wanted me to come in and do some training! Even though I felt like I blew my chances during the demonstration, they still saw something they liked in me. They saw my potential. They acknowledge that I wasn’t the teacher they wanted—yet— but after a few baby steps, I could be!

I am incredibly grateful for the confidence they had in me and the time that has been invested on both ends because now I’m more aware of my teaching strengths and weaknesses and I feel far more comfortable standing in front of a group of adolescents. Above all, I am now employed!! It’s not a full-time gig, but I have 3 classes to start out. Again, just a small step but it’s what I need. This is all a new experience and I actually think I would be overwhelmed if a full-time teaching job were thrown at me. This way, I can learn the ropes and take the baby steps to become the teacher I want to be.

Baby steps take patience on everyone’s behalves. My academy needs to understand that my training is an investment that won’t turn me into the perfect teacher overnight, but will have lasting results. And I need to take my time and not get frustrated with myself if I give a less-than-perfect lesson, knowing that it will only help me plan a better one next time. 

It’s taken me a week to put this entry together and I’m still not feeling so enthused about it. I had all these great analogies to make—how “baby steps” has literally proven to be the answer to my frustration during yoga practice and how I have a Daddy Longlegs spider friend who has been patiently growing new legs since I discovered him with only 3 about a week ago. But for some reason, my normally creative mind simply isn’t intertwining them the way I would like. So I’ve decided to simply wrap up the entry as it is, with this reminder as to why it is okay that it isn’t perfect and is instead more of a work in progress: 

"An inescapable fact of human life: We are always trying to become something different, striving for a new mode of being, and indeed cannot remain in one state for long...Nothing in life, therefore, can be regarded as stable. A person should be regarded as a process, not an unchangeable entity."

                                                                                         -Karen Armstrong, Buddha

Until next time…