I Have a Choice

This has been another good day. Not quite as good as yesterday, but still a good day. It started with making another call to the bank in America, then giving some oral mid-terms, then having a long lunch with a colleague while we ate kalby tong (갈비 탕), then working on some stuff in my office followed by meeting with a colleague tonight.

By the time I got back to my office after lunch and calculated the grades for the tests I gave this morning, I was worn out. I’m not exactly sure why. For the last hour before meeting with my colleague I read something another professor invited me to peruse.

When I met with my colleague this evening, we talked about many things. The first hour was consumed mostly by the subject of how to speak English. He has been a Godsend for me in terms of figuring out how to manage the class and figure out how to teach English the most effectively. I’m still learning and am feeling much better about teaching than I did at the beginning of the semester. I lost my cool a few times but have learned through the process thanks to some colleagues whose know-how far exceeds mine.

As we left his office, I gave him the details of my recent break-up. This was helpful and hurtful in terms of working through the process. I am mostly over the broken relationship though there is still sadness and regret for the things I did wrong. There is also a recognition that many things did not make sense and they still don’t make sense. But it is still more natural for me to blame myself for these things rather than her.

We even spent some time talking about ministers, titles (a key issue of the subject in the above paragraph), and a little bit of theology. Now I did my best to keep it simple but anybody who knows me at all knows I don’t do well at keeping things simple. That’s why I carry around my electronic dictionary with me as much as possible. It is just so difficult to speak simple, short sentences. This is something I’ve struggled with since I arrived here though I think I might be slightly better at it than I was a year ago. I remember hearing complaints about how complicated my e-mail messages were. That was when I learned to write in shorter sentences and to hit the return key each time I used a period and to doublespace between sentences.

The thing that kind of surprised me tonight is when my colleague told me he liked me. I didn’t ask many questions because I don’t want to let the secret out. I was hoping he would go into more detail but I guess we got distracted and started talking about something else. Here again was someone who didn’t really have to say this. I didn’t ask him of his opinion about me but it was something he freely offered. I guess I have a choice. I can spend my life wondering why I am not a better person or I can accept myself with all the flaws and recognize there something good within me. Of course I want to do the latter but this is not so easy for me.