Today's post will be short. There's ongoing fallout from the pre-Thanksgiving workplace adventures. If there's a good side to it, there's a very good chance that some longstanding issues are going to be dealt with, and that my little part of the world will come out of all this with a plan for a bright future. But growth seldom comes without pain, and I walked headlong into some of it yesterday, when I learned how some of our students felt about a few things that haven't gone right, some things I didn't learn the extent of until yesterday because they're outside my direct scope of operations.I also didn't know just how intense a few of the feelings were about some things that haven't gone right.
Mind you, I don't hold it against my students for telling me these things, because I really need to know; what surprised me is how it all happened, and my regret is that they didn't communicate their needs to me sooner, before we got to this point, so I could have done something to fix these problems. (Not to mention, I'm mad at myself for not anticipating their needs better, and I feel as if I've personally failed them somehow -- even though I've made myself available, even though I've tried to remind them time and again that they can be open and honest with me, even though I want them to tell me when something's wrong, I've failed to communicate that well enough because they haven't told me. I screwed up. Period).
Last night wasn't very happy for me, and I'm still just a little tender this morning. But now I'm trying to turn my dented feelings into a plan of action so this kind of thing will never happen again. I know the only way you can grow is to get feedback, and I am glad the students finally got it out so we can move forward and get better. But yesterday...well, wow. It was memorable. At least by the time I went to bed, I could crack wise to hubby that there's only one direction we can go from here, and that's up.
There's a quote from Tina Fey that I'm very fond of, because her quote could just as easily have been my own words: "I have a very high standard that I place on myself. Nobody's going to be harder on me than I am." So I bet you can imagine how I've been since yesterday. Everything I may have accomplished to this point doesn't seem to matter, because all I can think about is how much I've failed to deliver.
See you tomorrow.
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