The Treadmill

A dear friend wrote a blog recently outlining the difficult position women - particularly mothers - are in today. She spoke of a dinner shared by three female friends all of whom are letting something go in order to simply stay on the 'treadmill' of life. Due to a lack of time and financial backing one is reluctant to pursue the opportunity to turn an amazing talent into a business, putting all her energy into the daily pressures of running a family and making sure the mortgage is paid by submitting to a dead-end job. Another is so determined that everything appear perfect - her house, her hair, her clothes, her children, that she is marching head first into a nervous breakdown that is right around the corner from her next manicure. The third woman, is smart, funny and generous. She manages to work, run her own business and take care of three children, but like most women, does not look after her own health. She is about to fall off the treadmill because she didn't listen to the advice of every airline steward; "Make sure your mask is securely fitted before you attempt to assist others."

Three women. All educated, all intelligent and articulate. All are married to comparatively great guys, men willing to do their share of the domestic tasks, men who are supportive husbands and active fathers. As an outsider looking in, I would say that while each of these women are currently facing a particular challenge, by and large, in the post-modern sense of the word, these three chicks have it "all". However, as one of these women I recognise the crippling effect of that continual self-doubt which nags away at us. Women brave it all. We wake up, get the kids dressed, give them breakfast, make sure their school bags are packed, make sure we're dressed, no baby-spit on the shoulder, speed the offspring to school and child-care, race down to work, smile and nod and pray everyone likes us. We hurry to the after-school pick up, make sure the kids eat, bathe, do their homework. We read them a story, tuck them into bed, and then we start whatever take-home work we have. In between of course, we feed the cat and the dog, do the dishes, pick up the cushions off floor, put the toys away so no one breaks their neck, chauffeur the kids to swimming, soccer, dance, parties, play dates and feel guilty for not spending enough time with them. We squeeze in romantic date nights in an attempt to make ourselves feel human. We rush to waxing appointments, facial appointments, manicures, pedicures. We pick up the dry-cleaning, pay the bills and fold the laundry. We have unsatisfying sex just so we can tick something else off our To-Do list. We do all this with a smile plastered across our face. A smile that proclaims to the world, "I'm okay. I've got everything under complete control." But under the smile, deep inside, the part of ourselves that only gets a voice late at night when we lay in the dark, our husbands obliviously snoring beside us, is breaking apart.

The cracks start small. The little failures that rationally we know have been forgotten by everyone else, haunt us on these dark nights. We magnify them. We begin to believe that's all that we are, our failures - no matter how small or how random. The confidence we display to the world disappears and we are twelve years old again, scared that the popular kids are going to mean to us and that we will have to spend lunchtime in a toilet cubicle to avoid the humiliation of being alone. We look at ourselves through a microscope, critique our flaws more harshly than any enemy would. We find reasons why our achievements are not REAL achievements, why we could have done more, done better, why we could be more, be better.

We're old enough to know that crying doesn't help. If we're lucky we have a select group of friends we feel comfortable sharing select moments of weakness with. Maybe the problem is the myth that was sold to us women who were born post-third wave feminism. We were told we could have it all. The reality is however, that we now have to be it all. For most of the women I know, we are caught between balancing any career aspirations we may have with the very sobering realisation that time is fast running out. That despite the push to move women into the public sphere, for most of us we are held back by the fact that like our grandmothers and great-grandmothers we still believe that we should be last in line. We continually put everyone else first. Our children, our partners, our parents, our friends, our colleagues. We could choose to fight it. We could tell the world to go get fucked and claim what should be ours. But we don't. Most of us simply acknowledge that life is unfair and we just need to suck it up and keep running on that damn treadmill.

Mr Pleather

A friend's husband, a man known in e-circles as The Great Pretender, commented the other day that from my infrequent rantings one would think that the only students to people the school I currently teach at are feral, unintelligent, rude neanderthals. I would like to clarify that this is not the case. I have taught, and continue to teach some students who are truly amazing individuals - they challenge me, open my mind to new ideas and concepts, and teach me about the world and often, about myself. When they leave my classroom, I am better for the time we spent together.

So, in order to balance the proverbial scales I am compelled to send out a hearty salute to all those moron teachers out there. You know the type - earring still in one ear, none the wiser that that particular fashion went out in 1987, haircut from about the same vintage and pleather jacket purchased from some dodgy Vic Market stall. A man whose singular ambition in his career is to make less work for himself, and if nothing else, THAT he is succeeding at. Well, Mr Pleather has managed to slither his way up the slippery pole of educational advancement and is now Head of a major faculty - and true to his cause he is doing his darnedest to make sure that all teachers in his department are losing whatever passion they used to have for educating young minds. He doesn't hold meetings with his colleagues, his 'team' as he insists on calling them (only one tiny step away from 'comrades'), he holds lectures. Opinions from other teachers? Viewpoints from those who have greater experience and might I suggest greater intelligence? Don't be ridiculous. What could there be that Mr Pleather doesn't know? He sends out emails with the subject heading: "Please print and retain" (yes, I'm serious), letting everyone know that his word is only second to god's.

And then to a man who believes his word is equal to god's. Sorry, that's insulting - greater than god's. It is the ever-rising corner office chaser. To those who think individuals who chase those middle management positions and the office furniture that comes with it only exist in the corporate world - think again. Only in education, instead of views of the city skyline, you get a big window that looks out onto the back of some crappy 70s building and kids walking by, giving each other the latest on who sucked what Saturday night. One particular corner office chaser has literally screwed up every job, every minute task he has been given. Every program he has meant to run has been such a debacle the school has been forced to hand it over, broken and in pieces, to someone else to fix. The peak of his professionalism, in my humble opinion, came in an email to an entire Senior School with an attached timetable and the note: "If you notice that there are clashes for you or your students, please fix them among yourselves" - awe inspiring. Does he get sacked? No. Demoted? Ney. Lose the precious corner office? Neyt. Does he continue to sit with that smarmy little grin, ruddy cheeks and yellowing teeth in that corner office? He certainly does. Does he strut around the place in hideous neon shirts with clashing ties, also circa 1987? Nod, nod, nod. Like in every other industry, in education, shit often rises to the top.

Just as I suffer through the infantile little shits who can sit at the desks in my classroom, there are brilliant young people being subjected to the likes of Mr Pleather and the corner office chaser. So, are the scales even? Sure. We're all being screwed.