Approval Neither Desired Nor Required

I am very slow to anger, and I tend to have a lot of patience with people. Still, I have been offended, and I feel like venting. Dear readership (all three or four of you!), feel free to comment.

For those who do not know, I started in college to be an English teacher. During my second year, when I was not quite twenty, I was asked to observe a class of 12th graders. I knew I wanted to work with high school kids, but I knew I wasn't ready to be an authority figure for kids who were only a couple of years my junior. I decided to delay the professional education coursework and finish with a combined major in English and Communications / Theatre. I knew that, in time, I would go back to education if the desire was still there. I ended up going to graduate school.

My plans for work after graduate school didn't work out as expected, but that just proved to me that it was time to continue on the path to becoming a teacher. I do not regret the backwards nature of achieving my goal, and I feel that this is the time. Not everyone shares my feeling.

A couple of days ago, I found out that a woman I have known for nearly twenty years works where I work. I dreaded running into her, because she always finds a way to make me feel inconsequential. Although I was a friend of her son's in school, she always finds a way to make me sound inferior to him. Long story short, our paths crossed, and the inevitable happened. Yesterday, she added insult to injury.

It isn't that I care that she has done this (I expected it)...it's the fact that I have wasted the energy being annoyed by it that unnerves me. As is the case with any situation in life, however, there is a showtune that perfectly suits the scenario. As I prepare to go back to work today and face this woman, my mantra is this: "I ain't sayin' I'm better than anybody else, but I'll be danged if I ain't jest as good!"

Well said, Aunt Eller. Well said, indeed.