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Every so often I read a blog post that I feel is worth re-posting. And this is one of those times. The writer is a good friend of mine. We share a last name and a love of writing. She is far more adventurous than I am. Her name is Kayalyn and she is my daughter, but I would be reposting this if her name was Myrtle and we’d never met.
This first appeared on Kayalyn’s blog as an America India Foundation fellow. Here is the link to the blog and the AIF website.
This is for everyone who needs to feel like what they do makes a difference. In other words, this is for everyone.
At the start of every new adventure, we expect to be a bit nervous. We give ourselves time and space to learn how to do a new job, fit into a new social circle, survive a new city. But what happens when the adventure is no longer brand new, and we still feel a little…off?
November 11th marked the two-month anniversary of my move to rural Jharkhand. These past two months have been wonderful, scary, enlightening, and challenging. I have seen and done things I never even dreamed of, and I’ve met people who fill my days with laughter and joy. But there’s something else I’m feeling, something less welcome and more complicated—that seven week slump.
I can only speak for myself here, but it seems that whenever I embark on a new journey, I hit a wall around seven weeks in. Seven weeks seems to be just the right amount of time for the newness of my adventure to wear off, for the real work to start, and, somehow, for me to still feel like I’m struggling with simple tasks. Living in a rural setting is challenging that no matter how much I learn about social norms and expectations, I still feel like I’m struggling to grasp some very basic ideas. Who do I shake hands with? Who do I avoid making eye contact with? Can I go to the market with a male coworker, or will this generate more gossip about the strange white girl? I feel similarly about my job here at Yuwa. The first few weeks of teaching English were exciting, and I cut myself some slack when I felt like my lessons didn’t really go so well. I was brand new at teaching, and I had assumed I would take a few weeks to really get the whole process down. But now, I’m two months into teaching, and some days I feel like I’m a total failure as an educator.
Seven weeks is the perfect amount of time to feel like you’ve got a lot of things figured out, and nothing figured out. I feel like I am finally contributing to my organization, but I also feel totally useless sometimes. I’m in a strange limbo between being new enough to not know what I’m doing, and not new enough to be this confused.
So what’s a girl to do when the seven-week slump hits? So far the only thing that has helped me is remembering that, in the grand scheme of things, seven weeks is not a long time. Yes, two months feels like more than enough time to figure out how to do things properly, but I have eight more months of this fellowship adventure. I have time to really learn how to do things well, how to contribute as much as possible, and how to make a real impact. I even have enough time to pick up enough Hindi to not embarrass myself at the local market, but that goal remains a distant hope. Instead of letting the slump get me down, I’ve come to embrace it for what it is—an opportunity to continue to learn and grow. With two months under my belt, I can take a step back and evaluate how I’ve been doing so far. I can see where I need to improve and, importantly, acknowledge what I’ve already accomplished. Rather than feel defeated by the slump, I can look back to my first day at Yuwa and recognize that I really have learned a lot, even though it sometimes feels like I will never get the hang of some things. For example, on that first day here, I had no idea how to get to and from Ranchi, the closest city, by myself. Now I can navigate the often frustrating shared-auto system with relative ease and a little bit of confidence. Take that, slump!
So to any other fellows feeling less than capable after two months at your post, don’t shy away from those feelings. Embrace them, take them for what they are, and counter them with the reality of your situation. Your adventure is no longer brand new and you may not feel like you’ve come very far in the past weeks, but trust me, you’ve learned more and accomplished more than you realize. Think back to your first day at your post. Did you feel totally overwhelmed by a task that now feels pretty easy?
Take comfort in the things you have learned, and stay motivated by the things that have yet to become easy. After all, we have eight more months to be challenged, to fail, to learn, and to succeed. Embrace the slump and then move on to the next learning experience!
