So you know that point in life where you just want to assume the fetal position and let the stormy part of life pass around you while you cower under the covers? Yeah, that's life for me right now. And as much as I want to run away, I can't. Because life always has a way of coming around and biting me in the butt. This is the biting part. I've been doing the running. I want to be like the kid who hides behind parents' legs, but I'm supposed to be an adult now, and mom and dad aren't here. I must start slaying my own dragons. And that's scary as heck. You see, spiders and snakes and things like that, I've got no problem with. Normal fears and phobias are just like 'whatever' for me. My fears all have to do with my future, or certain confrontations. These are the fears that haunt me at all hours, rob me of sleep, and have me wanting to assume the fetal position.
Okay, so it's time for the background story. How I got to this point. Well for starters, I'm an Elementary Education major, so one of the required bits for study is practicums - going to help out in classrooms, get a feel for what teaching is like. At the beginning of the semester, I was all set to do my first practicum and all that, but then through circumstances, I haven't done anything with that. I was supposed to. Now not all of it is my fault. My school communicates primary through email, and for a while, I was without my laptop. So I had to get a new one, making me computer free for a while. That doesn't really work well with emailing. There are also big parts of this that are my fault though. For starters, I'm not the best at checking my email on a daily basis. But also, I was just getting scared of having to go out, into a new school, working with new people, and trying to keep up the image of my university while doing it. I felt pretty pressured. That's kind of a lot of weight, and it was making me nervous. So I procrastinated and never did anything about my practicum. Didn't start it, didn't even try to contact the teacher, nothing. I was trying to run away. It's worked for the most part. I've really delayed having to do anything about it. But now I must go talk with one of my professors about my practicum. And I have a feeling it won't be pretty. So I'm even more scared of that now. And I want to run. But I have no where to turn to, no where to hide.
So that's one reason, and I think reason enough to want to assume the fetal position. That's how much I'm not looking forward to it. But there's also another reason. Again, dealing with confrontation in the end. Like I said earlier, I'm in Elementary Education, but lately I've been thinking of switching over and majoring in English. Not English Ed, just straight English. Now here's the snag: I've spent two years in El. Ed., and even took a few Ed. classes in high school. And I still need to tell my parents that I want to switch majors. Will they be like "Okay. We fully support you in this, and have absolutely no ties to the idea of you being a teacher." No. It will go more like this: "That's a stupid idea. You've already invested this much time and money into this, finish it out. Besides, a lot of the money that went into this was ours. If you switch now, it'll be like you've been wasting money." So talking to them.... yeah that'll be fun. Now I've got good, solid reasons why I want to switch, and it's not just me running away from teaching. But will that be enough?
Through this all, I also need to register for classes (once I get my major figured out) and fill out my housing contract (which is slightly dependent on my class schedule). Did I mention that there's only a few weeks left of school, so finals are around the corner? Yeah, these are fun times for me. And I'm coming to the end of the track. There's no where left for me to run. I can't curl up in a fetal position. But that's all I can seem to handle right now.
