Carried by Experience

I've enjoyed reading Facebook friends' updates of gratitude this month. Gratitude is contagious and I've been thinking of my blessings, especially the blessing of experience. Thirteen years ago I was a BYU graduate with no job. I did temp work and met for various interviews during lunch. I'd interned as a technical writer before graduating. However, when a month or two passed without finding a tech writing job, I decided I needed a job doing almost anything. I interviewed at a small company. They needed a front desk person who could do some marketing type writing. The owner liked me and offered me the job right away. It wasn't my dream job but I was getting impatient and needed money so I took the offer.

The morning I started the job I knew I'd made a mistake. In my LDS faith we're taught that God gives us direction through feelings and impressions given through the Holy Ghost. I believe God cares enough to steer me in the right direction so this is a belief that is easy for me to accept. The world at large might call good or bad feelings which accompany an experience "the gut" instinct. Call it what you will, but I knew I'd made a bad mistake by accepting the job. I felt so terrible after lunch break I never went back. Instead, I got in my car and bawled all the way from Provo to Salt Lake. I wasn't sure where I was going but in my mind I was a failure on the road to nowhere. Here I'd had a nice job offered me and I couldn't even make it through the first day. I questioned my feelings and tried to talk myself out of them to no avail. It would have been so much easier to be working the job I'd chosen rather than running away from it. I checked into a cheap hotel in Salt Lake. I closed the curtains and spent the afternoon in the dark crying my eyes out.

To make a long story short, a few months after this experience I was offered the technical writing job of my dreams. I was offered the highest salary of all the jobs I'd interviewed with including the job I'd accepted and ditched. I went on to make dozens of lifelong friendships and gain knowledge that led me into a successful career in technical writing. If I hadn't gone with my "gut," oh how much I would have missed!

I'd largely forgotten about this experience until an afternoon this last September when I checked Nicky out of her first grade class with no intention of ever letting her go back. I'd spent the first five weeks of school carrying heavy dark feelings. I'd put a smile on my face for Nicky in the morning as I gently nudged her tiny reluctant frame into her classroom. I chalked my dark feelings up to the adjustments of letting my first born grow up and take on full days of elementary school. Each night Nicky would relay her day to me. Some disturbing tidbits about classroom behavior emerged but I brushed it aside. Over the five weeks I heard things such as, "the class is noisy," "the kids are bad," "I'm in the bad class," "I can't hear when the teacher is teaching math." The day I volunteered in her class I beheld the scene that gave reason for my nagging worries. That day the class was entirely out of control. While the teacher did her reading groups in the corner, kids were talking to each other incessantly and they ignored my urgings to quiet down. There was a tantrum going on at one table and a fight at another. Nicky and one other Asian girl looked like two lambs in a lion's den as they quietly tried to do their work. This all happened while the real problem child in the class was in the office with the principal meaning that the class was even worse when he was there. I looked at my baby girl and knew she wasn't in the place that was best for her. I made no decision until the next day when I stopped by at lunch. There was a look of helplessness on Nicky's face when she saw me and she grabbed my hand. When our hands met I felt in her anxious squeeze all that a six year old couldn't articulate. What I knew she felt was anxiety and unhappiness with school. That night I asked her pointedly if she would like to change classes. She said, "I know it would be the best thing for me but I will miss my friends." So the decision was made.

The worst part of our decision was talking to the principal and teachers. The principal initially told me there were no spots in any of the other first grade classes so we were out of luck. We had our official meeting two days after that so I spent those two days not eating and contemplating home school. It was the day I brought Nicky home from school that I remembered my experience with jobs many years ago. She sat nervous and unsure in the kitchen as I told her about the day I had to leave one experience for a better experience. I told her I knew in my heart that she would be in a better place for her soon. The teachers cried when Jeff and I told them our decision and felt hurt when I told them Nicky wasn't in the right environment. Of course they said that was the environment they create as teachers. I told them how sorry I was to hurt them. I cried all weekend because the confrontation was so unhappy for them. A good friend helped me by saying, "better some adults cry than your child." In the end the principal unhappily switched Nicky to another classroom.

Nicky's first teachers were so nice and seemed so good. I'm not sure why the class had a problem. I don't want to bad mouth the teachers, school, or principal. This was simply a case of me needing to get my daughter in the right place for her. Nicky has been in her new class since the last week of September and she's thriving. The new teacher is wonderful and the children are so sweet and kind and sweet to each other. The first time I volunteered in the class I cried. The principal told me that I wouldn't be gaining anything by switching classes, that they were all the same. It just wasn't true. The new class runs like a well oiled machine. The kids were all in their places doing their things. There was some chatting but it was under control. The scene was overwhelmingly different and I felt relief and happiness. I felt more happiness when I met with Nicky's teacher for parent teacher conference. Nicky's new teacher pinpointed all her strengths and made me feel so good about her. I got to hear how much the teacher appreciates having Nicky in her class and how well she's doing. Nicky never cries to go to school anymore or hangs back reluctantly when it's time for drop off. In fact, Nicky says she's happier at school than at home. The darkness has lifted and I can go about my day when she's at school knowing she is just where she needs to be. I am so thankful for experience. I'd never had a situation where one past experience gave faith and its silver wings carried me through the difficulty of a new experience. I see advantages to this getting older business.