love me that I may love thee

O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant. --Baha'u'llah

I've always seen this selection from the Hidden Words as commenting on the relationship between a soul and its Creator. That's my general perception of this collection of gems. I've recently seen how one can apply in my human experience.

Do you have any relationships that just seem to clash constantly? Theoretically, my teaching partner and I work together to connect undergrad students with environmental law in a 3 credit political science class. For the first few weeks, I felt like I was going into battle every time we had to work on the syllabus or plan a lesson. We didn't see eye to eye about how to convey the information, what information was important, or sometimes what the law was. Every time one of us would say something, a tense 5 seconds would elapse before a response came from the other. I would leave our conversations exhausted and frustrated.

I would complain to B, telling him that I didn't understand my partner and why was he so hard to deal with? This is nothing new, by the way. I've complained mightily about each of the four jobs I've had in grad school:
1 - too easy, they didn't ask me to work to my capacity, and what does event planning have to do with social work anyway?
2 - no office, not enough supervision, overly complicated process, not "real" legal work like my classmates were doing
3 - office politics, was I really making a difference?
4 - too stressful, didn't know how to do it, office too small
Gah. I wish I could say I saw this pattern, and then changed from shear will, but it was hidden from view.

What shifted for me was that I left my teaching partner high and dry last Thursday. It was no problem for him, he was totally prepared. I hadn't read the cases, or outlined them, or thought about how to teach them. I played with chalk and arranged my hair while he carried the class. It. was. awful.

As soon as class was over, I declared to my partner, Never Again. I thought a lot that night about how he depends on me, how the supervising professor depends on me (17-year-old program!), and most of all how the students depend on me. It hit me that people have been depending on me my whole life, and I've been counting on them being forgiving, understanding, and figuring out what the heck to do when I don't come through.

So I got that I no longer have the luxury of finishing teaching prep -if I have time- and just winging it if I don't. It's not fair to the students. And I'm committed to the students. I promised to read all of the cases and be prepared to teach them for the rest of the semester. Undoubtedly I had done that when I interviewed for the position, so this was a matter of realizing how much my preparation matters and owning that.

So now I had to figure out what to do about my stubborn partner... and that's where the quotation comes in. I realized that I had never given him a chance. I didn't trust him, I didn't like his style, and that was seriously getting in the way of our productivity. So I gave that up. It was time to see him as a true partner whose strengths and weaknesses complemented mine rather than copied them.

Prepping on Sunday was a breeze. Tuesday's class was slow, and it was no big deal. Today's class was awesome. I woke up this morning early and did final preparations, got to school, and my partner had left his outline at home. No big deal. I printed out an extra copy of my outline for him, and we talked about how to divide up the topics. I had an idea for a group activity, and he went along with it. And then the class - I was so on my game, and when I wasn't, I asked for help. We did the group activity, and got everyone talking. Yesssssssss!