Fear

Every few months or so, it seems that I am faced with a new obstacle. Most of the time these obstacles are fairly short lived, and after a few weeks of stress, anxiety, and frustration, they usually pass. Last June, it was defending my thesis- 45 terrifying minutes, only to pass with flying colors. In August, it was finding and interviewing for a job- luckily one fell in my lap and I got to skip the whole interviewing process. And for the past few months, it has been teaching Ling 550 at BYU. This obstacle has been one that fills me with overwhelming fear at least twice a week when I arrive to lecture, as well as sometimes in between days when I'm preparing for class the next day. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching. I love the subject I'm teaching. But for some reason, the idea of standing in front of 8 BYU seniors and graduate students, lecturing them about language change, conversation, variations of English, etc., when I myself have just barely finished school, is extrordinarily terrifying. Some days I sit in my office and dream up reasons to cancel class (would it really be so bad to break my arm? couldn't I get in a car crash? maybe a distant relative is deathly ill). And then I realize that I'm being ridiculous and I force myself to march down to the belly of the JFSB to face the prospect of a stoning, beheading, or worse: questions I can't answer. Or even worse than that: questions I can't answer, but a student in the class can.

What it really all comes down to is the fact that I'm dreadfully insecure about my abilities, but more specifically, my intelligence. It doesn't matter that apparently the Linguistics Department thought me to be competent enough to teach this class. It doesn't matter that I have a master's degree or that I might know a little tiny bit about sociolinguistics. All I know is that I don't want my students to think I'm stupid. I don't care if they hate my guts, but if they think I'm not intelligent enough to teach this class, I'll probably hole up in my room and watch the Lord of the Rings and eat kettle corn for the next 3 weeks. And the day is rapidly approaching when I shall know their opinion of me- with the end of the semester comes the time to"rate your instructor." Not only will the results of this survey determine my level of self-esteem for the next few weeks (hopefully my ESL students will give me glowing reviews to help boost me back up), but it will also, in part, determine whether BYU will ever want to hire me again, the type of recommendation I receive from the Department Chair, and my hopes of ever attaining a doctorate degree.

So join with me as I await the horrors that could befall me.