Feeling worse to get better: a story of unschooling in midlife.

One thing that we grow to understand about treatments, detoxes or other such health inducing pursuits, is that there is a high probability we will feel sicker before we get better. Oftentimes when we look to return from a path that led us astray, consciously or otherwise, we have to go back, and face the thornbushes we jumped over or through thinking: “this is where I need to go, let me just get there quick.” Only this time, we feel every little thorn and poison ivy. The memory of what was once the right way only drags us down, under the weights of shame and regret and if- only-s, making our progress cumbersome.

I truly love learning. And I have a hard time with education, or to be more specific, with schooling. Yes, I know, today we clearly distinguish between them. But for a brain that was educated in the 1980s, that distinction sometimes blurs. In my current Master’s studies I find myself at the intersection between learning and schooling, one pushing me towards the future and another keeping me a prisoner of my past. I feel the thorns with every assignment – the more free thinking, collaboration and true learning is asked of me, the worse the wounds. Becoming a student again has opened the door to feelings I had shoved in the closet a long time ago (around grades five to eight) and now they are all coming out because they think: you’re back in school so this must be our ride, right?

Teachers ask us to read, to work alone or in groups, to create visuals or put together papers that transform our time studying into a makerspace of something new. I can feel my love for the process. I enjoy (for a few minutes though it may be) the flow I get into (which has been missing from my life for quite a while).

And it is almost like, as soon as I sit down with a book or articles or when I sign in to discussions within the group, my breaks automatically come on. These are my old beliefs about what “schooling” and/or “education” are supposed to be, about how I need to make sure I get a good grade and why that is a must each and every time, the feeling that I need to compete, not cooperate and how, unless I somehow manage to appear smart in my interaction with the group, the meeting feels like a failure. I find myself reading everything twice, thrice even, as my default impulse is to memorize. I take notes I don’t use – but a voice from the past whispers in my ear: if you did not take notes, how did you learn anything, how will you remember anything? I concentrate so much on remembering terms and ideas that there is no space and time for or within my brain to make connections. My breaks and filters keep me on the surface of learning so much still that deep learning only happens in islands.

There is an undercurrent of unhealthy competition that I feel each time I am working in groups or reading the works of my colleagues. I am unable to appreciate these or learn from them because I am busy comparing and estimating if others will get a higher grade than I will. And it feels like a tornado. Within the span of only a few minutes I go from thinking I am God’s gift to the classroom, to a full blown flare of impostor syndrome. Filters in my brain turn any constructive feedback from my teacher into a statement that’s telling me how stupid I am and who do I think I am to show up in this group. No sooner do I think that, and my “teacher’s pet” identity feels called upon and acts: if I cannot be smart, I can be obedient – that, I am already a master at. Just yesterday, I traded the quality of my presentation to being so rigid about making sure I kept within the timing the teacher indicated (and watched with envy how my colleagues opted to go with their flow and did so much better). Oh, and when I get a moment of respite from all of this, my lack of patience shows up to remind me that I am forty-eight and I have a lot of making-up to do so I’d better hurry and bite more than I can chew. I will chew it up eventually … . Or choke on it.

My own educational hell.

I realize that what I am going through is a process of unlearning and re-learning happening in parallel and that it is hard – especially in my fifth decade of life. At times it feels like I am singing two different tunes with the same mouth. Trying to sustain this takes a lot away from what should be the energising effect of the flow. The thing is, I am not sure whether I will ever be able to unlearn so much as to do away with all barriers that block my deep learning or at least to have a good time learning.

I do recognize that there is something behind the slowness of the unlearning process, this simmering recovery and my hope is that the excavation I get to do when I write will help me recognize behaviors sooner and remind myself that I am no longer ten years old. Yesterday, after class, my physical distress was so severe that I found myself speaking to the ten-year-old who was still suffering in my body. I acknowledged to her that what she went through was hard and that it is natural to feel all the feelings. I expressed my sorrow at the fact that there was nobody there to listen, hold space and protect her and I reminded her lovingly that we are not there anymore, that I have brought her with me, within me, into a life that is the most aligned with my heart and soul than ever before. We sighed together and, for a while, there was silence within. We are both grateful for every break we get.

Photo by Armand Khoury on Unsplash