How My Perfectionism Got Spilled All Over the Place

Two years ago one of my DSG leaders went to a seminar on perfectionism and informed me that there are many different realms of perfectionism: appearance, performance, moral and relational. It dawned on me that although I've let the term roll off my back for years, I definitely do fall into the category of a relational perfectionist. This was fine. I'd chosen the most acceptable form of the disease and roped it off. Much like eating off of one of those divided dinner trays made for young children who don't like gravy on their peas, perfectionism didn't touch any other area of my life. It was perfectly contained.

Until I became a teacher.

The problem with teaching is that everything - Everything - is relational. Deadlines are relational, organization is relational, my lesson plans are relational. Nothing stays separate. Perfectionism gets spilled over everything because everything is littered with PEOPLE who are not ME. Nothing I do affects only myself: The time I set my alarm clock for affects whether DV can retake his math test before school; how many hours of sleep I get finds a direct correlation to the thinness of my patience with the thirty five people I will work with the next day; how quickly or neatly I write on the board wreaks havoc on the pupils of my pupils who strain to read my chicken scratch; if I choose to ignore the post-it note S just flicked at D it determines whether he does it again in ten minutes and whether I stay after school for an hour-long detention tomorrow; the lesson plans I write impact the special ed teacher, my master teacher and the substitute teacher who's in my room because I was relational with a student who had the stomach flu.

So that is how I became a full-fledged perfectionist.

MIDDLE SCHOOL.

Dear students who slit their wrists in my classroom, spread rumors about "someone who likes someone else's banana" on days when bananas are served at lunch, flick post-it notes, write swear words, engage in cyber bullying, engage in physical bullying, vandalize the back table, lie to my face, threaten to get me fired and steal all my dry erase markers,

I understand that you are trying to figure out who you are and what life means, but could you please not be so messy about it?

Love to all,

Ms. Seversen

P.S. Please don't waste your time playing video games this weekend