Down in the Slumps.

Have you ever had a slump?  The kind where nothing is quite right but you should keep sweeping the floors and making the beds. The kind of slump that tempts you to lie in bed most of the morning playing Candy Crush and hating yourself?  The kind of slump that keeps dishes in the sink a day too long? These slumps encourage multiple pizza nights and one or twelve too many glasses of wine. 

You know, when really what you want to do is anything other than what you have to do but you can’t really put your finger on what you have to do or what the alternatives might be.  The papers pile up and nothing tastes good.  Maybe you get a cavity or an ingrown toenail.  It’s a stale cracker time. You might even find yourself wishing for some kind of minor non-life threatening and non-expensive catastrophe.  Just enough to jar you.  To get you going.  To wake you up. 

You’ve become a zombie.  Well, not you perhaps, but I did.  It was the midwinter for me.  The unexpected ice storm that, despite its beauty and the fact that we did not lose power, seemed so out of place in Georgia may have played a role.  Perhaps having to monitor my youngest child’s homework in a way that I never did with the older two got to me.  It has been the mid-winter of my discontent to be sure.

Don’t get me wrong:  I got up.  I went to work.  I returned phone calls and bathed (not simultaneously).  But, I just wasn’t feeling it.  Neither was my family.  We moped together.  We discovered that the family that mopes together gets on each other’s nerves. 

Perhaps you have had too many inches (feet?) of snow and too frequent subzero temperatures to really shake the blues.  No sun for days?  You know what they say:  all clouds and no vitamin D leads to … unfinished clichés and too much wine drinking.  So, what’s a person to do? 

Take an exotic vacation around the world?  Go on a silent, spiritual retreat?  Out to eat with friends?  The movies?  Stay in bed until being there actually becomes aversion therapy that kicks you up and out and back into life?  Who knows.  Sometimes we just have down times. 

Despite what all the magazine covers want you to believe, it is perfectly normal to not feel normal.  You don’t always have to rearrange your closet or freshen up winter with a colorful pillow or add sparkle to dinner with a splash of citrus or start an energizing workout. 

You can just order pizza and watch Netflix.  It’s okay.

Our tendency, as driven Americans, is to berate ourselves if we are not at the top of our game all the time. No time like the present to start something new or find a new cause or just cheer up. Feeling down?  Chin up! Press on. Put on a happy face!  I disagree. 

It seems to me that if we spend time berating ourselves while we are in a slump we get even slumpier. If you are hating yourself for being in the funk, then how can you expect to get out of it?  We are kicking ourselves while we are down.  We treat ourselves so badly – worse than we ever would treat a friend who was feeling down. 

We really should practice mindfulness even and especially in the slumps.  Explore your slump – feel its walls, explore its caverns, listen to its sighs.  Take a deep breath of the slumpy air – taste it.  Wallow in the pond of slumpiness; dunk your head in it.

It will end.

Then, you’ll keep going – on your own schedule and in your own time.  The snow will stop falling.  The temperatures will warm up.  Candy Crush will become mind numbingly boring. The cat will need food.  You will move to the next phase.  And, just maybe - if you have been in a mindful slump, you move forward – and you are a new person with a better understanding of your life and yourself.

ax^2 + bx + c = 0

Everybody has an Achilles heel.  Everybody.  Even the most brilliant people I know – some of whom are former students – have an area where they just are not as confident.  Mine has always been math.

Over the years I have joked with my students about how I always do grades and all math on a calculator or computer.  It’s the truth.  When I have important statistical reports that I need to prepare, I do the math, and then I take it to our school’s calculus teacher, and ask him to check my numbers.  I am humble and he is kind, as well as generous with his time.  I do math when I cook - halving or doubling recipes.  I can balance my checkbook and proofread my paystub.  That’s about it, folks.  And, I have always covered up my math deficiency with jokes and extreme proficiency in other areas.

In considering pursuing a second master’s degree, I was going to apply only to a school that did not require any testing.  Then, as Murphy will tell you always happens, I found one that I really want to apply to that requires the GRE.  I signed up to take it on December 20, being relatively confident because I took this test 24 years ago and did well enough.  Friday afternoon I took a diagnostic test online.  Results:  95% in verbal; 0% in quantitative reasoning. 

I am not joking.

I texted the results to my eldest son.  His response:  “That’s bad.”  Same text to middle son: “No problem.  I’ll teach you.”  Same text to a friend who is in the middle of applying to med school: “Give me a book and two days, and I can teach you everything you need to know.”  Same text to my sister: “Are we even related?” 

Later that night after drinks with friends, I reflected upon this result and I became very sad.  The kind of sad that call forth tears whenever the topic flits across one’s mind.  Middle son asked me what was wrong, and I said (in typical middle school girl fashion):  “I’m stupid and it makes me sad.”  He responded (in typical now-I-will-be-the-parent-for-a-minute fashion): “You’re not stupid; you can relearn this math because you once knew most of it.” 

Rewind to 7^th and 8^th grade.  It always stuns people when I tell them I was in accelerated/honors math in junior high.  In fact, it still surprises me.  I remember the room – up and around the corner from home ec and woodshop.  I fondly remember the teacher:  Mr. Page.  Love that man.  I don’t remember what we learned.  I don’t remember how on earth I was in “smart” math – pretty sure some money changed hands on that one.  At any rate, I trundled along in math – getting As and Bs as best as I can remember.  I preferred humanities, but I could hold my own in math. 

Enter Mr. Anderson – if there is a teacher who should have never been allowed in a classroom, it is this man.  He was a very tall balding blond man who sat next to his overhead projector, drew angles and talked.  Geometry was not my friend.  Still, I went in after school.  I tried to get it.  I attempted the proofs.  Then the day came:  I was in his room, ostensibly getting help, and he became exasperated with me.  I was at the end of my rope trying to get whatever the concept was that was eluding me, and he was at the end of his trying to explain it to me.  As he packed his briefcase, getting ready to go coach basketball, this was the sentence that ended my math career:  “You know, you’ll never really get math because you’re a girl.” 

I should have been taken aback, horrified, enraged.  I should have reported this overt sexism and lack of professionalism to the principal or my parents.  I should have taken this statement as a personal affront-turned-challenge and excelled in every level of math, eventually becoming a world-renown rocket scientist or economist or mathematician.  I don’t know what – if anything – I said to him. What I do know is that from that moment until today, December 8, 2013, I gave up.  I did not report his comments to anyone; I did not take them as a challenge; I was not mad.  I had been given permission to give up, and so I did.  I have bachelor and masters degrees, and the last time I took a math class was my junior year in high school.

I have a student in Russian class this year who frequently says, "I'm not good at languages."  It's not true.  She is doing well, and she has the best of reasons to be in the class:  to one day talk with her birth mother. Motivation. I have a friend who is just out of college who defends her perceived weakness in English with such light-hearted phrases as, “I can’t write; I’m an engineer.”  This isn’t true, and I know because I taught her in Advanced Language and Composition in high school.  In fact she can write – it may not be her favorite thing to do.  She may feel she is stronger in other areas; she probably enjoys sciences and math more, but she can write. She just finished reams of med school essays.

The same is true of me.  I may have forgotten most algebra and never truly learned geometry, but I can learn some now.  I am motivated. I can do math. As we enter the holiday season, I hope you don’t have to take standardized tests, but I do hope that you are thinking about challenging yourself.  Sure, we all have areas that we accept are weaknesses and that’s that.  But, there are other areas where we might sit up and take notice.  We might think about learning or relearning something for our own edification.  In the end, wouldn’t that be a better way to spend time than watching cat videos or reading all of those internet lists? 

So, what are you going to learn?