09.27.09
My Cake of Life
Student Teaching. It’s something I’ve looked forward to doing for years. That chance to finally complete a degree that I decided I would get back in 7th grade, and have often fought to keep throughout the years due to my double major. Then, in just about two weeks, my entire world crashed down around me, and I find myself loathing the very career in the very age group I’ve always dreamed of wanting to do. Part of it is my personality. I grew up as the quiet kid that never speaks, or raises their hand. The good kid that nobody notices. I had to advance a long way to build up what authority I now have, but I still don’t have that teacher aura, and I’m too nice a person to keep a classroom to the level my CT wants me to have. Part of it was that I was completely overwhelmed and couldn’t recover without extra help, making those that grade me view me as a dissapointment to the point that all they see is where I’m wrong. Not the fact that my first ‘nightmare’ class was turned into my favorite and most successful class within three weeks.
I feel as though I’m a beginning chef. A little chef with dreams of being so for over half of my life and now I’m up to the big test. I have a kitchen with every food ingrediant and measuring/cooking/baking tool I could need, and a head chef to ensure I don’t cause any big explosions and help me out. My one task is to bake a specific cake. The catch is that I have no recipe, and have only ever baked cookies in the past.
The head chef opens up every cupboard door and tells me to get out what I need, then frowns when I get out things that I don’t, or forget things that I do, and questions result in brief talks on how I must do it myself now, since I’ll have no help in the future. Using what knowledge I have, and my common sense, I piece together all of the equipment I need, and my reward is a warning that I’m taking too long to figure things out, and look at how far I still have to go. I get out the ingredients I believe I’ll need. More than I’ll need, but then I want it to be right. But when the actual mixing starts to begin, I find myself feeling the pressure. I have no recipe. I have only a set amount of time to achieve my goal or my chance is lost forever. Every time the head chef walks by I feel only dissapointment from them, and find myself wanting to crawl under a rock and vanish.
As I work, every mistake I make is torn down. I learn from it, and try again. And again. And again. Always being darkly watched. Each cake I produce has the errors pointed out, and the questions on why I didn’t do something I hadn’t known I should, with lack of knowledge being unexcuseable. Unacceptable. I want only to finish what I’ve been stuck into. Finish baking and be done forever, never to return to this nightmare career I wanted to be a part of over half my life ago.
My cakes begin to improve. The shape begins to hold, the taste and texture, while not perfect, are edible. But it’s not what they want, and so it is wrong. Unacceptable. The good of it is thrown out with the bad. And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I make a leap in progress. The cakes are beginning to taste better. They still aren’t right. Still they end up being thrown out, but I can see it for myself that they aren’t as bad. That bit of hope lets me suddenly bake a cake of perfection. A vanilla cake that held together perfectly, every ingredient mixing properly with everything else. I show it with pride to the head chef, commenting happily at how I feel I’ve done.
“You’re free to believe that.” The cake is thrown out. As completely unacceptable as all the others before.
I made vanilla. It needs to be chocolate.
