Sunday, June 17, 2007

If you're the praying sort...

...pray for me.

Seriously. For some reason, this lesson-planning thing is turning out to be more difficult than I anticipated, and not in the way I anticipated, either. I mean, if I was regularly distracted and I found myself preferring library books and watching DVDs and stuff, yeah, I could understand that.

But I find that when I sit down to go through this -- and this is just lately -- I'm gripped by this choking, paralyzing FEAR. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't understand this. I must be completely incompetent. And I can't focus.

First of all, I KNOW that it's totally irrational, not to mention ridiculous. I can remind myself that I do not need to do this. It's just something I've decided I want to do. If I don't "get it," NBD - I'll just teach next term about the way I did last term; it really wasn't so bad. In fact, I did pretty well. There really should be NO pressure for me to master this. None. So why is there?!

Second, this is freaking me out, because this isn't something that's typically happened to me. Sure, sometimes I get down on myself; some days I'm just grouchy in general. This goes way beyond that, and it's something I've never experienced before - beyond uncertainty or frustration into crippling self-doubt.

I'm not sure what to do about this aside from gritting my teeth, digging in my heels, and pushing forward. But it's hard.

So, if you can spare some prayer, positive energy, or fingers crossed in my direction... I'll take just about any help I can get (though I have ruled out selling my soul *g*).

2 comments:

Ms. Q said...

I started to type "Don't worry..." But, in reality, it's something you have already decided to do, so my suggestion is push through. In fact, I would schedule time each day to do a little bit of work on it. Set goals, small ones at first. Schedule small amounts of time in the beginning and then give yourself a bit of time off or a small reward for work accomplished every once in awhile. This is how I feel as I am going through writing up my intro chapters for my doctoral study. But, you will get through this. Also, you have great ideas and great questions, just take it a step at a time!

Erin at Being Poetry said...

First breathe. I suspect that because it is now five days past your original post that you've recovered. I, too, have been slogging through UbD and feeling quite inadequate. My first attempt was excruciating, as well as boggling. However, I went to bed and the next morning I went to Dana Huff's site - huffenglish.com and read her posts. Then I went to the UbD tutorial site (which you can get to from Dana's site) and downloaded the sample curriculum. Suddenly it felt like a sudden light was turned on and after a few more days of thrashing around through the book. I think I have it. Thank god for the blogging community. Hang in there!

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