Learning & Forgetting

It isn’t true that we don’t learn anything: we learn. But then we forget. It must be hard-wired. My mother said if women didn’t forget the pain of childbirth, the human race would have died out long ago. At my venerable age, I have evolved several rules on this topic:

Some things never change and we always forget that.

Take returning to teach, for example. It doesn’t matter how much I prepare the week before, get ahead on housework, plan assignments and easy meals. It doesn’t matter that I’m retired now and teach only one class. It will not be different this time: the first week of school, culminating in back to school night, exhausts me.

Some things always change and we never remember that.

Like new shoes, the new schedule never fits exactly like the old one, requires walking in a while before you get comfortable. This year I have class Monday, not Tuesday, come earlier on Wednesdays, etc. After a week, I think I’ve got it. Then there’s a Monday holiday and it all changes. Again.

It’s the same class, same grade level, but the students are different from last year’s, quickly and conscientiously do assignments, and there are eight fewer of them. Those who teach know that eight more or less makes an exponential difference in the classroom. For example, the introductions about their writing that took the first two classes last year are done in one this year. I’m going to need more assignments.

The assumptions of youth are hard to shake…

When I was young, I had many illusions about grownups. Mature people had learned what suited them and their temperaments, had their comportment under control. From where I sat as a naïve, insecure girl, older people certainly looked composed. I was convinced my elders had become wise in the ways of work and never made the novice mistakes I committed daily.

…even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

At my 20^th back to school night, I’m telling the parents about required journals, flipping through the class list in my head, trying to remember who was missing one, hear myself add, “I think everyone has brought theirs except Michael.” Aloud. I said that aloud. And Michael’s in the room. As is his now furious mother, because this is not the first time this has happened, as she whips around to tell him immediately, like he doesn’t know that already.

Oh dear. I try to patch it up—no big deal, he can bring the journal Monday—but Mom’s not buying it and I’ve ratted out a student without meaning to, because I’m a firm believer in teachers working out issues with students without recourse to admin or parents unless absolutely necessary. And yet, look what I just did: a novice mistake in my 20^th year.

Failure to learn from experience is unrelenting

Throughout my adult life, I’ve made amateur errors without thinking—not thinking causes such repetition—and then beat myself up about it for three days. The old “open mouth insert foot” disease strikes again, I fume at two a.m. when I should be sleeping. I know I’m prone to it: why can’t I remember that?

Unfortunately, such flagellation rarely results in remembering to do things differently next time. After a half-century working (my first job was fifty years ago: awesome or depressing?) I have at least learned to not be surprised. In my golden maturity, I realize it’s unlikely that my actions will dramatically impact anyone else’s life. So I only beat myself up for half a day. “No fool like an old fool,” I mutter, and go to sleep at ten like always.

When Michael next comes to class, I take elaborate notice of the fact that he’s brought his journal, which he’s a bit bewildered by, because, of course, he’s forgotten the entire incident. Pity. Poor Michael will be learning and forgetting this lesson a dozen more times before he makes it out of high school.