Substitute Teacher

We had a substitute teacher in my French class this week because, for reasons still unknown, our "regular" teacher was absent for several days. While the focus of this entry has nothing to do with why she was not in class, I obviously hope she is all right.

Having a substitute, though, was a bizarre phenomenon to experience as an adult. Even though all my classmates are "mature" individuals (the ages of the people in my French class range from 18 to about 60), there still exists obvious antipathy for substitute teachers. I had assumed that the immediate rejection of substitutes simply evaporated after adolescence, much like concepts such as "recess" and "best friend" necklaces. But such is not the case. Who knew?

So, my classmates definitely did not seem to warm to the newcomer. People expressed that they wished they had skipped class since they so did not like having someone different teaching. I found this reaction borderline extreme because the class, it seems worth noting, is not exactly cheap. But such a response does illustrate the opposition to the circumstances pretty well.

Oh, and I should also include that there was nothing particularly "wrong" with the sub. She was helpful, she described thing well, she even made an effort to learn our names right away. By and large, she is a good teacher and I suspect that if we had her from day 1, we all would have liked her just fine.

Obviously, in my French class, we are not wholly proficient at the language--hence the need for the class in the first place. So it does make a certain amount of sense that we crave some consistency during the hours when we make clumsy attempts at pronouncing/hacking up the "r" sounds and earnest efforts at grasping elusive concepts such as why some verbs can never be followed by a preposition or why using the word pendant correctly is so darn difficult.

I guess it stands to reason that, with so much uncertainty going on with our learning trajectory alone, we would want to know that there are some reliable factors involved in our pursuit of knowledge. And the teacher seems to be an obvious choice to proffer that stability.

It made me think, though--what is with this human propensity for comfort, for safety? It definitely seems as though there is an innate attraction we feel towards "known factors." It is not just in random adult French classes that this proclivity is exemplified. It has occurred to me that it is illustrated in all kinds of life situations.

It seems to me, that humans generally like the balance between the "known" and the "unknown" to be tipped in favor of the former. My assumption is that we like to maintain a certain degree of familiarity in our activities and interactions because that familiarity provides a backbone--a source of stability from which we can more confidently move forward. Also, in a lot of cases, we just want consistency because it is physically and emotionally easier on us; change or the unexpected often rattles us in an unpleasant way.

And Aha! There you have it: we have unearthed the most basic reason why intercultural living can be so challenging at times. There are so many things that "just aren't the same" when you live within the boundaries of another culture. Aside from the obvious language differences that often exist, everything from the way to order a sandwich, to how much you smile, to the to the texture of plastic wrap is different.

It is frustrating because we spend a good deal of time in our "normal" lives acclimatizing to our surroundings, learning and repeating rituals, cultivating our personalities within the reasonable external boundaries of what is "acceptable" for our particular culture.

And then you up and move to France and your whole way of living, your every paradigm is unceremoniously turned on its head faster than you can ascertain the appropriate time of day to switch from saying bonjour to bonsoir.

The craziest part of this personal revelation is that I always assumed I was fairly engaged in life in general. I thought of myself as a curious person, as someone who was not satisfied with taking the "easy" solutions, of living a life replete with banal routines, or automatic actions. But being in France has shown me how much of my life I really did live on "auto-pilot."

Because here, I have to think about everything before I say or do it. I find myself examining and reexamining my habits, the ways I interact with people, even my value system. In many ways, it is a great thing to force yourself to question why you do every little thing that you have been doing without thought or consequence for countless years.

In other ways, it is just exhausting. Like, "Can't anything be simple?" "Can't anything just be predictable?"

In a word: Nope.

I suppose I am grateful that I am forced to be present in my life here. Because I do think that leaving your comfort zone is really crucial to being able to evolve as a person. So while I may want to scream in frustration and humiliation at regulal intervals while trying to acclimate to France, I do think that it takes forcing yourself to loosen the white-knuckle grip on all the "knowns" to be able to critically look at yourself.

And maybe that decision to pull yourself out of your saftey net is not always up to the individual either. Because it does seem that in life, just when we are starting to feel comfortable, there is always some sort of unexpected entity, some sort of "substitute teacher" that comes in and forces us to shake things up anyway.