Tuesday 12 March 2013

Microwaves and Patience



Tues March 12 2013

Let me talk to you about patience. Patience is a virtue I do not poses. As in this is the girl who will eat a lukewarm meal because I cannot wait for a microwave to fully heat a meal. So, to work on an African computer system, filing books I don’t understand, half in a language I cannot read. Trying to fit in teaching, librarian duties and my own school work as well as exploring, friends and sanity. Dealing with communication in a way I don't understand, and students who will never tell me when they don't, patience has become the centre of my life. And let me be the first to admit, I’m still not that good at it. I am still likely to shut the library door and burst into tears of frustration once (or twice) a day because I don’t know what I’m doing and just see mountains of work ahead of me, and a thousand things needing to be redone and a million expectations and disappointments when I cant achieve it all. 

But the funny thing is, I am so excited about this. My ranting is in enthusiasm as opposed to in frustration. Challenge is good. Challenge, especially in an area you care about, leads to improvement, it means you do things you never thought you could do. It means at least once a day you think “I give up, I quit, I'm done.” Then at the end of every day you get to think “I didn’t quit, I kept going.” That is a great feeling. It's good to be uncomfortable because then you have somewhere to move. You will always make mistakes. You will entirely Screw up (or at least I will). And you will learn enough to make you eager to do it again. 


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