Life in Motion

I never did give an update about the various life stressors I wrote about several weeks ago. Many things have happened since then or are still in the process of happening. I see it every day that nothing ever truly stays in one place. Just last night I spontaneously went back to completing a few video lessons from a Coursera class on plants that I started studying prior to the pandemic.

Seems like I am still the kind of person to internalize everything and think very hard about the experiences I had in my everyday life. Which is why I am wide awake at 3:43 am as I type this. I hate it when I sleep and wake up like this with a bumrush of recollections that make it difficult to return to sleep.

I didn’t end up telling my professor about my mixed feelings about being back in an in-person class. I stood outside his office door for several minutes and then decided against it. During the period of waiting in the hallway for the current class to end before mine could begin, several other students arrived and we got to casually talk. Somehow that helped because one of the things I did say was that the class felt long-winded at times since it was three hours long. My remark was not unfounded, as other people agreed. I felt better about trying to push through the class that day and bear the three hours knowing others were trying, too.

The interview with the schoolteacher and her student interviewer happened. I did some preparation for a visual aspect of the interview which related to one of the questions I answered during the interview. Overall I believe I only answered two questions but honestly that was better than backing out of the interview entirely. My supervisor did most of the answering, and it was partially because he had a wider scope of knowledge than me for some questions. I was also not that comfortable since it was a weird situation to adjust to, with the student interviewer having to hold a small microphone very close to whoever was currently answering a question (to ensure the mic was capturing the audio properly). I don’t know how I managed.

If the interview is ever edited to completion and I have a chance to watch it, I probably won’t, at least not for a very long time. It took me ages to even watch a recording of a mock interview I did at a vocational school I was once in. That was painstaking in the sense I fast-forwarded through some parts if I felt particularly embarrassed about seeing my mannerisms and watching my own nervousness trickle on through on-screen.

The stuff with the Urban Sustainability club is still in progress. Some of the delays are technical. I filed the paperwork with the necessary information for each member (including myself) who will be on the e-board of members running the club, but it’s taking more than a few days for the student center’s office to process it. We also need to do some kind of online training and send proof of completion before the club can officially be active again, too. So it’s stressing me out that the team is assembled yet there are these technical hurdles. And that’s why when I helped do tabling outreach with my school’s campus sustainability team yesterday, I was very hesitant to even introduce myself as the president of the sustainability club and instead didn’t mention it at all.

Lastly, what still feels terrible on my part is how much I don’t want to do the oral presentations for my class project. It clicked in my mind a few days ago why. Aside from public speaking nerves, it’s that I am insecure about the project idea. My impression is the project is still in the early stages and many specific details haven’t been worked out. So a lot of aspects of it feel abstract. That is what freaks me out.

I think about the worst-case scenario, like what if I’m up there with my project partner explaining to the class and the professor for one minute what the project will entail and then we get an unexpected question or worse, a criticism that I won’t know how to answer. Maybe it won’t come to that. The brief presentation is an opportunity to educate and for my classmates to give feedback on the topic. I should think of that, instead of listening to my self-doubt. This is the worst part about negativity is when it comes from my own mind on a constant loop 24/7 even in the moments leading up to the situation where I continue to have to fight against it.