In the course of my life, I've learned to do a lot of things, such as tie my shoes, laugh when appropriate, Calculus, and speak with food in my mouth. Some of these skills may be considered simpler than others, which is accurate. The point here isn't the degree of difficulty of these skills but the massive quantity of them.
Take one skill I've picked up: wearing contacts. I started wearing these little films of clarity before my freshman year of college, nearly five years ago.
During my first month with these near-transparent, artificial eyes, it took me a solid ten minutes just to force the damn things to stay, as if by magic, on my eyeballs. I still remember it clearly: I would poke an eye with that thin little oval of definition until I cried from pain and my eyes cracked with those red eyeball vein things. Still, I persevered, knowing I'd see the leaves on faraway trees soon enough, and that would justify all pain.
After the trial of putting the blasted things in regressed into memory, and many months, even years, had passed, I realized that the small case that I stored them in, the one with the twist cap that I fastened snuggly, safely, every single ruddy night, didn't need to be fastened snuggly, safely, at all. I learned, more discovered (in the fourth, repeat, fourth year of my usage), that the caps could simply be turned over and made to rest atop their respective coverings, all with no more harm done, and all-in-all saving me approximately one minute each day from fastening and unfastening needless contact case caps. Incredible, it took me four years to save six hours of my life per year from this banality. Incredible.
Finally, mere minutes ago, I realized I could remove my contacts, clean them, place them into my dry case, and then fill it with solution. Before, I had always filled the case with solution first, and then dunked under my little eerie orbs of light-sharpening technology. But now, the benefit of my discovery, of squirting in solution to a case that already holds my unveiled luminosities, is that I can use the absolute minimum volume of that spendy solution required to make my sense sharpeners swim. Economical. Also incredible that it took so long for me to figure out the ostensibly simple trick.
For those of you all, dear readers, dedicated enough to this seemingly aimless idiosyncrasy to have made it thus far, I offer you my kudos, and my conclusion.
I have, in all modesty, now mastered the art of wearing contacts, I think. It has taken me four years, more than eight months, and probably less than twelve days, to do so. Close your eyes when you see the period to this sentence: Imagine that! nigh on five years to perfect a skill simpler than learning to speak and chew simultaneously. (Close eyes and imagine)
And, to think, I was given a mere six months before deemed "not showing potential for excellence" in teaching, I quotely-paraphrase from something I read from Hartford Public Schools about non-renewed teachers.
Six. Months. Before deemed unable to lead young humans–by an immeasurable gulf the most complex organisms in our world–down the path toward becoming good citizens. Premature assessment?
It took me almost five years to learn how to most efficiently store and wear my contacts. Had I been evaluated on my potential for excellence in wearing contacts just six months into my marriage to them, I would have been considered less than excellent at it then, but to label me not having the potential for excellence? Bit extreme, no? Especially considering I've now achieved the apex of contact efficiency.
(This blog was not written out of bitterness for not being renewed as a teacher. I am most content with this slight alteration in my life trajectory. Okay, fine, maybe a hint of bitterness stews.)