And for … let’s call it the thirty-third year in a row, I have not been asked to share my wisdom with the graduating class of Tumbler Ridge, keeping intact my perfect record of not being asked to share my wisdom with the grad class.
Last year, it was my daughter’s class that graduated and failed to inquire after my wisdom. This year, it is my class that hasn’t invited me to speak to them.
My class? Well, yeah, sort of.
You see, after Loraine Funk, the former publisher of the former Tumbler Ridge News passed away, I was looking for something to do with my life.
I suggested that I could start a newspaper, but my wife, bless her, didn’t think that was a good idea, financially.
So I cast about looking for things to do. I got a job at the Dawson Creek Mirror as a reporter.
That lasted about three weeks, until word made it to the publisher that I had no plan to move from Tumbler Ridge to Dawson Creek. (At least that’s the story the editor told me when he gave me the news. I think it was just because I was too good a writer and was upstaging all the rest of the content in the paper. I have a flair for self deception.)
Anyway. After that fiasco, I started casting about for things to do. Which included putting in an application to work as a substitute teacher. “I can do this,” I told myself.
Turns out, I could not.
After working a day or two here or there, I was brought in to fill in long term for a grade 7-8 class.
Which, if you do the math, would be this year’s (and next years; split classes are funny that way) grad class.
While I love the process of learning, and passing on knowledge, that did not translate into being a good teacher. Talking with people one on one, imparting things that I know? That’s an amazing experience.
Standing in front of a class of twenty something twelve and thirteen year olds? Boy howdy, that’s something else.
I tried to be funny, I tried to be serious, I tried to be strict, I tried being lax. Mostly, though, I tried (and usually failed) to maintain control.
There were a few moments of revelation, though. One of the assignments for Humanities (which is a class that merges History and English, and by default was my favourite thing ever) was to take an event from the middle ages and write it like a news story (I know, I know). Having done that, the next assignment was to take that idea, combine it with a totally different genre, and tell a new story.
For example, says I, we could take the story of Brunhilde of Austrasia (upon who the Valkyrie of the same name was possibly based). She watched her husband kill himself when his bid to become king failed, but she managed to seize control of the regency in the name of her young son. When her son died at the age of 26, she once again took over as regent for her grandson, and then again for her great-grandson.
Now, she wasn’t the nicest ruler (when the bishop Vienne preached a sermon calling her out for her sins, she hired a trio of assassins), and the nobles didn’t really like her, so when she help lead her great grandson’s army to war (at age 70, mind you), the nobles abandoned her, leaving her great-grandson to be killed and her to be captured. She was accused of all manner of horrible acts, including the murder of ten Frankish kings, and was drawn and quartered and her body was burned.
Take this story (again, says I), but set it in space. What changes? What stays the same if, instead of being drawn and quartered, she is instead pushed out an airlock for her crimes…
From this idea came a number of rather interesting (and often quite violent) stories, and it was interesting seeing the creativity of the young minds.
But on a scale of relaxing on a tropical beach to being dipped in honey and buried in an anthill, teaching was a little closer to the latter than I would have liked.
But here’s the deal: I’m rather glad for the experience.
Not just because it allowed me to indulge my love of the middle ages and English in ways that were creative and enjoyable, but a little bit of that.
And not just because I was actually getting paid to do something other than reporting, though that was nice, too.
No, I am glad for the experience because it taught me something.
When I was in high school, I considered, for about five seconds, the idea of being a teacher, but I decided that no, I wouldn’t make a good teacher.
And, having spent four months as a teacher? I learned that yes, my initial assumption was right. I did not make a good teacher.
And while learning something negative is frequently seen as failure, the fact is, it is a learning experience. It is a way to discover things: about the world and about yourself.
So this, my class, is the lesson that I hope you take from my experience with you. That failure is not failure if you learn something. If you take the knowledge gained and apply it to better yourself.
When you try something, and fail, there are a whole range of options that lay in front of you. Did you not succeed because this was something that didn’t interest you? Great. Ditch it and move on. Did you not succeed because, while you love what you did, you’re not very good at it? Great. Keep doing that for as long as you love it. Did you not succeed because what you thought was your dream is the dream of your parents or someone else? Then find your own dreams and chase those.
It is only failure if you do not learn something from the experience. If it prevents you from following the wrong path? If it teaches you about yourself and about life? Then it is not a failure after all.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
