MCAS is a sinking ship of fail.

I hate MCAS. 

We know this. It’s not a secret. I complain quite frequently about it. MCAS is a soul-sucking, creativity-killing, beaurocracy-driven, logistically despicable waste of valuable learning time. I understand why tests need to happen. I don’t understand why we can’t figure out a faster way to revise the testing process to make it more accurate and meaningful. 

Thirteen years ago, the sophomores sat down to take 10^th grade MCAS for the first time (officially, anyway, because previous years served as guinea pigs). Thirteen years later, we finally have a new set of learning standards, but we’re scrambling to create a better test to assess these new standards. Thirteen years of stupidly-worded questions, boring, repetitive analysis, and hours of missed learning time later, we’re TRYING to make a new test.

THIRTEEN YEARS. Why can’t it happen faster? What’s with the slow turnaround? While we were wasting time on a dumb test that doesn’t measure anything worth knowing, THIRTEEN YEARS worth of kids grew up and graduated or didn’t but it doesn’t really matter because we can’t help them now. Thirteen years worth of students think open response is a genre and multiple choice is a way of life. Thirteen years worth of students missed God knows how many hours of learning time that was spent prepping for or taking a dumb test. 

What took so damn long? When a ship is sinking, you jump ship and try to swim to shore. You escape in a lifeboat. You shoot off flares. You do anything, really, as long as you’re doing SOMETHING. You don’t stay on the sinking ship until it hits the ocean floor, just to make sure it’s really sinking, just to make sure there’s no hope. 

So here’s a radical idea: What do you say we try not to drown from now on? 

This depicts my feelings towards MCAS.

Turn into the skid.

Friday it rained. It wasn’t light rain, drizzling rain, or soaking rain, it was hard, furious, pounding rain that makes you think the sky is angry and out for revenge.

Naturally, I was driving in this rain. My windshield wipers leave a lot to be desired on a drizzly day, so they were no match for this deluge. On the nastiest section of North Beacon Street, I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my car. It was the strangest feeling, like my car was floating. Hydroplaning, I realized, as my mind reverted back to Driver’s Ed. Nothing I did with my hands or feet made any difference. I just floated down the road, headed directly for a median strip, the pounding water against my car deafening. All I could see was the blur of a red car as it spun off the road next to me.

Random bits of information whirled around in my head. A car is one of the safest places to be hit by lightening. It’s not speeding until you go 10 miles above the speed limit. You have to change your registration within 30 days of moving. And if you’ve lost control of your car in a snowstorm, turn into the skid.

Turn into the skid.

Nevermind that I wasn’t in a snowstorm. Nevermind that I was a few feet from hitting a median strip with rails that would destroy the front of my car. Nevermind that I had no idea if there were cars beside me or in front of me or behind me. I turned into the skid. Slowly, deliberately, I turned into the rails I was about to hit. As soon as I did it, my car drifted away from the median strip, back towards the lane I wanted to be in. I felt the tires reconnect with the ground. I saw taillights in front of me. I saw the blurry neon of signs. I saw a red light from far enough away that I had time to stop without slamming on the brakes. I was fine. The rain slowed down. I found parking in front of the restaurant I was meeting people at, and sprinted across the street barefoot to avoid ruining my shoes. I ate vegan food. It was glorious.

Everything turned out okay because I took a risk. I threw logic to the wind. Something dangerous was in front of me and I turned towards it. It makes me wonder about logic versus emotion and the idea of risk. I’m great at taking risks at my job. No matter how flawless your planning is, life gets in the way. Sometimes a tangent can lead to a more valuable lesson than the one I have typed in my lesson plan binder. Sometimes a teachable moment trumps a content lesson. In fact, I think it does more often than not. I’m smart, spontaneous, flexible, creative, impulsive, and able to adapt, which is a large part of my strength as a teacher.

But what about life outside work? Do I take risks there? When I’m sliding down the road, do I ever turn into the skid, really?

The more I think about it, the more I realize I’m kind of a wuss, especially when it comes to relationships with men. You know until this year, every relationship I’ve been in has started with the guy telling me he likes me, and then me saying it back? They’re just words, I know, but my actions mirror them. I never LET myself have feelings for anyone unless I already knew they had feelings for me. I never took charge. I never got the ball rolling.

Why didn’t I? I mean, clearly I can take charge. All day long at my job, I make decisions. All day, I am in charge. All day, I move mountains to make things happen for my students because that’s my job, and I do it well. Sometimes I think that’s where the problem lies. Maybe by the time I come home to real life I’m just too exhausted. Life is the space between what you should do and what you want to do, logic and reason versus heart. I’m so good at balancing the two at work, but when it comes to my life outside my job, I’m at a loss.

Should. I hate that word. I should be asleep right now so I’m rested for tomorrow, but instead I’m writing something that has been eating away at me, crawling around in my mind for over a week. SHOULD is irrelevant. As my eyes struggle to stay open and I dread the exhaustion that will come tomorrow afternoon, I don’t regret staying up late to write this because I want to, and I need to, and I have to believe that’s more important than whether or not I SHOULD.

I met a man a few months ago who was everything I SHOULD like, but I felt nothing. You can’t choose what you feel and what you don’t feel. You can’t turn feelings on or turn them off. You can’t help it. You are completely powerless. No amount of logic or reasoning or thoughtful decisions will make a difference.

It’s been so long since I had a long-term relationship that I only vaguely remember what it’s like, and I’ve changed so much since then that it’s probably not even relevant. I was hurt and disappointed so much that I stopped trying. You know how I said “turn into the skid”? Well if we’re continuing with that metaphor, when it came to relationships, I never gave myself the chance to turn into the skid. I never got in the car. I just stayed home.

The more you are hurt, the more guarded you become. The more things go wrong, the more you expect them to go wrong. We become master detectives, seeking out evidence to prove that our conclusions are sound. Sometimes we become masters of logical fallacies… “If Guy A did this, and also broke my heart, then if Guy B also did this, inevitably, Guy B will also break my heart.” We psychoanalyze everything about the situation, listing reasons why it’s not the right time, why we’re not ready, why it wouldn’t work, and what bad things could happen as a result. We’re cautious, calculating and completely batshit terrified.

What if you had this choice?

1. You meet someone incredible, share something electrifying and life-changing, but when it ends you are shattered almost to the point of no repair.
2. You don’t meet that person, don’t experience any of it, and are not hurt in the end.

No one wants to hurt. No one wants to be let down. If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have picked option 2 easily, to avoid pain at all costs. That’s the logical answer. But now I’d choose option 1, because I realize that pain is there to teach us something. Pain is there to make us stronger, fiercer, and more resilient than before. If pain is a prerequisite for these qualities, then I’ll have to embrace it. I’ll have to turn into the skid.

So here’s to turning into the skid. Here’s to diving into a lake where you can’t see the bottom. Here’s to doing what FEELS right rather than what I should do. Here’s to taking risks. Here’s to putting the pieces of me back together when things fall apart, because they will. Here’s to my loved ones, the glue that holds me together. Here’s to the unknown, to making decisions that go against the rules.

It’s one thing to say, “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” It’s another thing to really believe it. It’s another thing to live your life by it, to live in such a way that you regret the things you DID do rather than things you DIDN’T do.

Here’s to turning into the skid.

I’ll drink to that.