Outliers

I'm currently reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and it's become a sort of a struggle to read it.  I like it because it carries a sort of optimism in its words, but it just doesn't feel authentic.  That's how I've felt about Gladwell's other two books as well, Tipping Point and Blink.  I don't know how to describe it, but it seems as if he uses all the facts he's collected exclusively to serve his own purpose-- they don't sound as if they'd advocate his points, and yet he makes it so through his diction.  Alas, I read this book with a dubious mind.

However, there is something else that this book makes me feel, and it is a frustration of my failures, or rather, a desire to succeed.  I feel that I must take what I learned from the book and flourish in my element-- and I am in the peculiar position of currently being in my self-prescribed element, i.e. a classroom, at the moment I want to succeed in it.

However, I've really been feeling the fatigue and frustrations of teaching day in and day out.  I've been feeling my body literally become slow to move, and I've been forcing myself to become enthusiastic for my students, a decision all too conscious for its effort and so severely considered in the moment.

But I imagine this is the exact circumstance required to overcome and excel.  If I am not fatigued, then how else would I feel so great about my achievements if I am, truthfully, not really achieving anything?  And so, tired as my arms feel to raise them, I do-- to embrace the present and coming challenges, to use each day as a block to build the facade that is my confidence, a process slowly done but surely made, and to one day look back and just feel the magnitude of the mountain I just climbed resolutely beneath my feet.