a resolution and strange energy

strange energy. between us - instructor and me. i feel it. i consistently doubt myself, but i feel it. i do not think i have confabulated this. its like ... we feel drawn to the other ... and this creates some weird block. like - some anxiety - as in your nerve falls into the basement whenever that person lurks near your personal space. i wonder. it fascinates me. and this man - he appeared in my dream at least once. a prophetic dream. i wonder .... it feels so surreal.

the issue of the answer key i think has met a resolution. when the director brought the larger group together, he never made mention of the issue. just provided encouragement and strategies to enhance learning for us - the programming students. i felt something still. cowardly - for not approaching the instructor directly. somehow ... i could not. and it nagged me. he deserved my directness. and so i spent several hours, emailing him, last evening.

i am writing this, instead of telling it to you face-to-face, because my written
articulation skills far exceed my skill @ articulating myself in speech. first,
i have wanted to tell you so many times, the reason for what may seem like
erratic and inconsistent effort on my part - particularly with respect to
attendance. i have tried to give you some sketchy background @ times in the
past, but, a sort of fear prevented me from full disclosure. and, also, i have
often thought that too much disclosure = immodesty. and so i err on the side of
caution; and leave you wondering, i'm sure. second, i wanted to share some
thoughts on phase 1, learning c-sharp, and why its such a challenge for
students.

first - about erratic, inconsistent me

anxiety - i mean, like, pathological anxiety, the kind that makes one physically ill. in a
nutshell, anxiety is my biggest hurdle. severe anxiety actually forced me to
give up practising nursing. i could not get passed the huge and crazy panic
attacks to go to work. that's what happened when i tried to resume nursing after
several months of burn-out. you know the concept of supernova? well, that was
roxanne. a huge explosion that ejected most of my mass. i'm speaking
metaphorically, of course. but, you get what i mean, i think. taking a menial
part time job and returning to cdi was my first foray back into 'reality' after
a very debilitating 'supernova' and several months of rocky recovery.

anyway .... anxiety. i wanted you to know. because, all those days i
have called and said i can't come to school because this or that little ailment
... its really just that i cannot get passed the anxiety that seizes me as soon
as i awake each morning and prepare for school. and the late days .... those are
the days when it took a while, to get past the inertia of anxiety. of course, my
life since i have started this course has been filled with radical changes and
personal turmoil, so anxiety threatens to swallow me whole daily. i have given
up my job, and so now cdi is my only demand. my efforts and energies can now go
toward this course of study fully and completely. i am responsible for my own
learning and i intend to make it a success. the anxiety/panic demon still
plagues me, though, and i just wanted you to know. roxanne is anything but a
slacker.

second - phase 1 & c-sharp difficulties

i thank you for your compassion and patience with my slowness of getting thru the material
as i managed my various personal crises. the c-sharp material did not make much
sense to me. i felt such disappointment in myself that the assignments were such
a struggle to complete. to have to consult the sample you gave me .... it made
me feel 'dirty' .... for lack of a better word. of course, i perseverated on the
matter, to the point where it felt like a festering wound. i am not sure why i'm
telling you this. just ... perhaps you'd like to know just where i'm coming
from. its never, ever my intention to cause trouble. just .... i have a
conscience - a pushy one, at that. i just want you to know .... whatever the
perception may be ... that i'm on your side. i know there's some negative energy
buzzing around me, i politely deflect it.

alas, though, i am one of those people that like to 'raise to bar' wherever i go ... and so i suppose
that's what i hope for here - to find some way to make phase 1 less of
despairing challenge for others that follow. perhaps part of this means
increasing the interactiveness of the c-sharp portion? speaking personally, that
would be part of it. and ... i respectfully submit your workload as part of it,
also. workload, as in, the ongoing challenge posed to you in balancing office
application students (who seem quite needy, at times) and programming students.
perhaps its not my place to say .... but that's my observation.

that said, i have been a professional long enough to know workload is workload and
one must simply make do with what one has available. we all must make do ....
and that brings me to the next point. i have an idea - now that i have gotten
into the meat and bones of SD2E. after reading about use case realization i have
experienced a sort of elucidation ... with respect to some c-sharp concepts. it
seems what i needed to grasp c-sharp and its application is some sort of
theoretical underpinning. i can tell you, in retrospect, that, in completing the
c-sharp coding assignments, i think it would have been helpful to me to have
something that summarizes object-oriented concepts and relates them to the code
creation. in talking to katie, i have this sense that's where her frustration
and learning block also lies - in the fact that she cannot get a view of how 'it
all fits together' because she has not had exposure to the OOP theory yet.

i have some ideas ... have started to put together some points that
would help connect c-sharp code concepts to the object oriented theoretical
stuff. i.e. it was not apparent to me, until today, that methods are simply
messages objects send to other objects, and that the genius of any application
lies in its design ... any coding simply brings the design to life. the trick to
speaking any language is not just knowing 'how to say it', but knowing just what
is the right thing to say when. and the concept of classes, etc. which you went
over in that seminar, i think students do not initially grasp these concepts to
their fullest application, and yet do not realize they don't grasp these until
the assignment comes their way. anyway, i have begun writing something - notes,
point form - that might help. if it turns out to look remotely worthy of ever
seeing the light of day, i may share it with you ... and/or fellow students. i
am telling you all this because you might find it useful. nursing practice made
me a teacher of sorts, and so, i have tried to see this situation from that
perspective and share my insights with you, for what their worth.

ok. i did not intend this email to be so lengthy. my apologies. i hope you receive all
that i have disclosed here in the spirit i have intended. i ask, only, that you
treat my personal disclosure to you (ie panic/anxiety attacks, etc) with
discretion; i know that you will, but one must clearly specify these things,
just to be sure.

i want to just say one final thing ... about your dad.
i know it sounded trite when i said it before ... but i have witnessed and
endured lots of loss, professionally and personally. i know the funk of losing
someone so intrinsic to oneself as one's father does not dissipate so easily and
can settle on you like a fine mist. my sympathies to you .... is all i wanted to
say.


hoping i have not offended, or lacked respect or modesty here
in this email,


kindest regards ...

it took a lot to write this email. its too early to tell in any concrete way, but i sense that he received this well. that's what i sense. that's what it feels like.

the chemistry - the strange chemistry lingering here .... it still exists. it sits quietly, understated, in a very remains-of-the-day sort of way.