Eating Runny Yogurt with a Fork

If I had a little poster of captioned faces that you could circle which one best represents you to announce to the world how you feel, today I would circle "Frustrated".

Frustrated with what, you might ask (or you might just click on to another blog somewhere that has something uplifting and cheery to say because I'm kind of doubting that this will be either uplifting or cheery.) But, since you ask...I'm frustrated with school and I'm frustrated with work.

My classes this semester - you know, the ones I was kind of excited about because I thought the content was going to be really useful and applicable to things that I'm interested in? Well, they're kind of "content free", if I can borrow a categorization from Eric. Both of my "instructors" (I really have a hard time using that term, but none of the others - teacher, professor - really come close either. I could go with the term they'd probably in all honesty prefer, facilitator, but it makes me choke) are into constructivist learning to such a huge degree that I wonder exactly what the point behind my tuition was. See, in extreme constructivist learning, the learner (that's me - I prefer to think of myself as a student, but that's apparently not PC in the educational world these days, so we have to go with "learner", maybe then my "instructor" should just be called the "learned" - emphasis on the 'ed' for distinguishing purposes) is basically put in a room and told "Learn." Sometimes they're told "Learn about X." And then the Great Learned One (instructor) steps back and waits for the marvel of education to occur. Sometimes you're put in a room with other learners and then you're all supposed to work together to find education - kind of like how the 3 blind mice navigated around their farm and ended up running after the farmer's wife. In this model, you're supposed to view education as a journey, where you get just as much from the trip as you do from the final destination.

Yeah, someone was on a trip.

I have no problem being an independent learner - this is why I wanted an online program in the first place. I have no problem having minimal guidance, I'm quite capable of figuring things out on my own, doing research, whatever. What I do have a problem with is being told to complete assignment P but given no more information on exactly what is expected in terms of how P is going to be evaluated. Because helping eachother is all well and good, and fumbling around for explanations and being owners and creaters of our knowledge, blah blah blah - ok, fine, I can deal with thata. Right up until the point that you decide you're not going to grade my journey, you're only going to grade my destination. But if you only tell me to take a hike and never tell me where to end up, how do I know what direction to head in? And so I have this paper written that I think is finished but I don't know - she gave us one sample, my paper is very much like the sample provided, but my reviewer thinks it's boring and missing things. Now I have no idea what to do because the Great Learned One hasn't answered my query (read: desperate plea for guidance) and I'm skeptical that she ever actually will. Because here at the graduate level, we should just know these things.

Apparently I missed the required Mind Reading 101 course.

Throw in my frustration with work, which still centers around having very little to do, the pieces that I do have to do are all to fix the messes other people made (other people who really don't want me to help them because they think their stuff is fine and I'm just trying to horn in and steal their thunder), and the fact that, at the end of the day, I'm not convinced this is the career that is going to work for any kind of long term solution.

And then I'm frustrated because I'm frustrated. Because I don't like being frustrated - I want to be one of those people who loves what they do and finds fulfillment and purpose therein. Except that nothing I've tried has been any better, so I'm loath to make another change only to end up in a situation that's the same or, heaven forbid, worse.

So instead I sit here, in this situation that isn't the right consistency and try to make the best of it with the tools I have at hand even though they're not really the right tools for the job.

Yeah, that's me over there, eating runny yogurt with a fork.