On vulnerability & being perceived
trying to be brave by posting this despite myself
I have always considered myself comfortable with vulnerability, especially my own. That’s one of the traits I’ve adopted as someone accused of oversharing frequently. “Do you have to say every thought out loud?”—a frequent thought of mine and also occasionally shared by those around me. I often feel ashamed of how much I share; would it kill me to keep a thought inside my head just one time?
But I don’t say every thought out loud. If I think about it, the thoughts I say aloud are the ones that I’ve rehearsed a bit, the ones that I’ve decided might help me connect with someone. As a kid, I learned that you can connect with people by sharing facts about yourself—then they share facts about themselves—then you share a couple more facts about you…. The cycle was beautiful and made sense, regardless of whether it fostered any real connections between individuals. It works similarly to how you model a concept to students; you provide a framework with which students can practice engaging with the world. Even though you’ll eventually remove that scaffolding, it gives them a chance to build a foundation.
As a person who is sometimes great at connecting with people, I’ve learned the importance of being vulnerable and honest about oneself, to a likable degree. You will scoot across the balance beam, teetering between sharing too much and too little, but the beam is more forgiving than other balancing acts we must do in our lives. I think, ultimately, this is because people just really want to connect with others—we crave those connections because they make life less dark. And we can forgive others’ social faux pas way faster than we will ever forgive our own.
I think about how I am perceived a lot, which has made creating a Substack particularly difficult for me. Every time I post something, my anxiety takes over, I slam my computer closed, and I stare off into space. Sure, I could go grade something, given that I am a teacher, but the fear that someone doesn’t like what I wrote causes me to freeze and do nothing instead.
The other reason I think about how I present to the world is due to my profession. I am a young-ish teacher, and my students are not that much younger than me. I stand in front of them every day and try to justify to myself why on earth I am qualified to teach them anything. I’ve settled on a couple of qualifications that usually work:
I do have a degree, and I took classes that taught me how to teach.
I like learning and being in the classroom where learning is happening.
My mentors and coworkers have taught me a lot and are always teaching me more.
Finally, I try really hard, constantly. I am always reflecting on how to explain concepts better, how to build relationships that promote learning, and how to be the very best I can be for my students, my coworkers, and myself.
However, as I have grown through my teaching, I have learned more about my own perceptions of myself and others. I’ve known for most of my life that initial impressions are not always correct, but that fact has become more apparent when interacting with students. Now that we’re starting the second month of school, it’s fun to reflect on the kids who came into the building just a month ago and how different they seem to be. I had to have the “honeymoon’s over!” talk with them last week, and it’s true but also exciting. The whole co-teaching thing also helps with my self consciousness because, when I think kids are paying too much attention to me, I can remember the fact that several of them don’t distinguish between me and the other teacher in the room. At least, they call us whichever name they can remember first, not really bothering to match the name to the face. I kind of love it. And, yes, there will be a name quiz for them in the coming weeks.
I wonder if this will be one of the pieces I end up posting on Substack or if it will sit in my Notes app with the hundreds of other observations I’ve made over the years. To be vulnerable and write about vulnerability stresses me out, but it feels good to let the thoughts out. I wouldn’t say that my brain is a scary place, but it is usually pretty crowded. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.