The fourth and final quarter has begun at the American School of Douala. In the first two quarters, my class and I spent the first ten minutes of every class reading a book that was not assigned for class. The goal was to encourage reading outside of class, bring down higher energy levels after gym classes and get our minds focused on the tasks at hand. For the next two quarters, this practice has been replaced by ten minutes of writing. This practice will bring down energy levels and set our minds to task, but it is also an opportunity to experiment with our creative sides. Students are free to write about anything they want or interpret the prompt in any medium they wish – the prompts are only for those who need inspiration.
I write the same prompts with my students in all three of the classes we practice this activity – teachers should always be willing to do what they ask of students. Below are the prompts from this past week and my favorite of the three responses I wrote with my classes. All prompts were written by myself.
The picture at the top of this post was taken by our apartment’s pool this past weekend. It’s a hard life here in Cameroon.
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Monday 25 April
Are you a morning bird or a night owl? Are you more productive in the morning or the evening? Why do you think that is?
To answer the second part first – I think I’m much more productive in the morning. After coffee, I like to work pretty much non-stop and take care of business first. Once I take care of everything I need to, I like to switch gears and relax.
But I’m definitely not a “morning bird.” Waking up is hard – I have to set a dozen alarms to get out of bed in the morning. I feel much more comfortable late at night, and love the energy of “the witching hour,” from 3 to 4 in the morning, when nobody else is awake. Strange, unexplainable things happen during this time of night. On occasions where I don’t sleep at all, I love watching the sun rise after a long evening. It seems like the rules and expectations we all observe during the day have less weight at night, and I love that sense of freedom.
When I was younger, I ruled the mornings. Now, I long for moonrise. I can’t remember when that changed – maybe university? I can’t imagine going back now.
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Tuesday 26 April
After a terrible burglary in your neighborhood, the thief was found by the police due to a helpful call from an anonymous neighbor. In the morning, the police make a mistake and say that you are the person who reported the thief. A parade is scheduled in your honor, and strangers are sending you thank you notes for your “act of bravery.” But remember, you didn’t actually do anything to help. What do you do?
I would politely decline the parade – this is much too public – but I would let everyone continue thinking that I caught the thief. This is a form of power; if the police see me favorably, then I can get away with more stuff in the future, and I don’t think that I would waste that gift. If the thief was connected to organized crime, then I would disavow the whole thing altogether, because nobody wants to be a narc.
Sometimes, good things just fall in our laps. Serendipity – the chance occurrence of something, usually good – should never be taken for granted, because it happens so rarely. Usually, unexpected acts of the universe throw us for a loop. Bad news comes out of nowhere and forces us to reconsider everything around us. When the universe smiles, we should smile back.
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Wednesday 27 April
What advice do you have for someone who is speaking in public?
The first time I had to speak in front of a large group was in the summer of my 11th grade year. I was part of this youth leadership program called Boys State, and I gave a speech on “what it means to be American.” There were about 700 people in the room, and I was terrified. I couldn’t stand up straight and my leg was literally shaking with anxiety, and I had to lean really heavily on the podium for support. My voice cracked more than once. I ended up winning the speech competition and succeeding in other aspects of this leadership program, eventually going on to Boys Nation in Washington DC. There were more speeches in the Capitol and more speeches at university and in different schools, but that first speech always stands out.
You are never as bad – as shaky, as quiet, as ill-prepared, as inarticulate – as you think you are. In stressful situations, your mind can be an enemy, not a friend. But your body “remembers” more than you realize, and if you allow yourself and train yourself to relax the mind, your body will take over. I also like to tap out a beat with my foot or fingers to help keep pace and not speed up too much, which often happens when I start feeling anxious. The world is waiting to hear what you have to say.
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Thursday 28 April
Describe the perfect breakfast. What are you eating? Who made it? Who are you sharing it with? Where are you eating? What’s the weather like? How does it make you feel?
Salty air pushes citrus into sinuses, carrying light green curtains on currents of breeze and surf. Orange juice sits, grinning, on the white cloth of a round table, fresh and bright, the color of sunrise. Remnants of last night’s meal litter the small room – tossed shirts there, crumpled colors here – and the salt becomes less thalassic and more therapeutic, a smell of smiles and sweat, as it floats about the open room like a wisp. There is bacon, of course, thick and glistening with fat, and cracked eggs peppered, and thick bread with marmalade, and cuts of pineapple and mango and strawberries, welcoming their consumers and their appetites. We sit. Discussion is primarily nonverbal, as calves rest on one another lazily and bare backs welcome the firmness of wooden chair, and furrowed brows relax with the realization of absent remorse. This is a breakfast for champions, two to be exact, and a ceremony of their victory. Waves crash distantly and punctuate short sentences and long silences, the rhythm of the tide unbroken since the night before. Birds sing. We eat absentmindedly, slowly, picking at the food, connecting the delicacy of held silverware with other delicacies, and stop mid-meal to return to our feast.
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Friday 29 April
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle. Comment.
I find this quote to be vexing. On one hand, there is truth to this maxim. We truly are what we repeatedly do, if self-identification of any kind is really possible. I am a man because I perform “manliness” in my daily life, just as I’m a teacher because I teach, just as I’m a friend to someone else because I repeatedly try to be friendly and do friendly things. We are an assembly of patterns, and those patterns can be observed and identified, just as all the universe in Aristotle’s philosophy. That which has no pattern cannot exist, and humans must exist, so we must have patterns. Aristotle’s morality reflects this maxim, as his treatise on virtue (in the Nicomachean Ethics, at least) defines a “good person” as one who repeatedly acts according to virtues he identifies. A brave person is neither a coward, who turns from battle, or bloodthirsty, who seeks violence, but one who consistently occupies the space between these two extremes.
But then we apply this maxim to psychology – or at least, then I apply this maxim to my psychology – and it loses touch with reality. Humans are habit-centric animals, but we are also beyond our habits, and exist past patterns. We are random and irrational and chaotic at least as much as we are predictable and logical and ordered, and likely more so. Beauty can exist in symmetry, but it also exists in asymmetry, in the unexpected, and in the atypical. Seeing ourselves as our habits turns us in to machines. Good machines have good programming, and bad machines have bad programming. I find this standard to be unhealthy. On top of that, we also must consider that we define ourselves by what we are not, and by what we do not do, as much as what we are or what we do. Instead of pushing outward and creating a space for our identities to fill, we often feel like we are the empty space left over from other things; I am not a tree, because I can feel where this tree starts, and I exist beyond the boundaries of a tree. Alienation – the separation from our human community, our labor, our reality – is a product of this conception of identity.
Aristotle’s take on excellence leaves out too many examples to be perfectly true. Perhaps his maxim is not as habitually correct as he assumed.
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certification 
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