Thursday was most definitely an interesting day. At the end of it, my brain was so completely full. I felt very confident finding the elevator and then navigating the second floor. It was feeling pretty great until those stairs. There’s some still some serious anxiety about the stairs. In fact I was just about to cry when I went back up to do the stairs for the second time. I think it was important to do them again, but, man, I was pretty emotionally on edge. I will say though, that I was proud of doing them successfully on my second time through.
So, with the stairs done, I had to get out of the stairwell. Goodness, I so could not remember that I needed to go up those steps to find the hallway. To come off the feelings of coming down the stairs and not remember how to get out of the stairwell was incredibly frustrating. I felt very unsuccessful. I totally couldn’t keep anything straight in my mind. It really did feel like there were all these stairs to nowhere. I feelt better about getting out of the stairwell once I got to practice it the first time and do it successfully the second. Once I got going in the hallway, I was feeling good, but then, I hit that 45 degree angle in the hall, and that’s when I got lost. It helped when Lauren drew a map drawn for me, but still, I was so confused about how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.
The second round was better up to the point of the open stairwell. At that point, I was so tired. I figured it out though, and moved on, but I’m not sure where things went wrong. I really just wanted to be finished and not think any more because I was so lost. I had no clue what walls went what way, and the hall quieted down, so I couldn’t really depend on information from other people. I think in my desire to be finished, I started to make some really silly mistakes – like moving without a plan or destination in mind.
That first floor is still such a mystery to me. Still. I think it might be helpful to come down the first floor hallway from the opposite direction to flesh out my concept of the area. I think the core of my frustration came from not being able to figure out the problem I was presented with. I think it’s interesting that I could point to the front door for much of the time, but I had trouble finding what I was looking for. It’s pretty frustrating, knowing exactly where I want to go and not being able to get there.
A few times, I heard Mickey prompt me to solicit assistance, and a few things kept me from doing so, because goodness knows, I was in need of assistance. The first was my pride. I didn’t want to need help, so I would have rather gotten more lost in an effort to figure it out myself than to have asked for help. The second, more overriding factor, was that I didn’t have enough information to ask for help. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t think how to ask an intelligent question. I didn’t know what information I needed from another person.
I do think too much, that’s for sure. In the end, when you all stopped responding to my questions, I liked that because I wasn’t tempted to ask questions, I knew I wouldn’t get an answer, so I began to rely exclusively on my ideas. I can tell I will really struggle with answering questions for myself. Hopefully I can have this tendency brought to my attention enough that I will be able to resist the desire to ask for too much or give too much to my students.
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