Struggling

Have you ever felt stuck or struggled with something?
Yeah, that’s my problem right now. I’m struggling with some principles — honestly, I don’t even know why. But today, I just want to share my experience before I taught at SMPIT Nur Hidayah.

Before the Incident

Like usual, I wanted to do my “IDN Mengajar” program in Surakarta. I had already made a plan about how I would teach the students, what materials I would bring, and even the games that I wanted to show them.

At first, the principal was actually kind. He answered all of my questions politely, until eventually I faced something that really hurt me mentally and made me stressed.

The Incident

You can probably guess what happened.

At that time, I had no experience talking with principals before. Because of that, I made a lot of mistakes — my words, my sentences, my attitude, and many other things were pretty bad.

Honestly, I was really confused about what I should do. There were so many mistakes, and I felt like I couldn’t fix them anymore. So, I asked my teacher:

“What should I do after this?”

Imagine being a 14-year-old guy who just wanted to teach somewhere, but instead got mentally cooked by a principal he had never met before.

I was confused about everything that happened. Even my friend told me:

“That was fatal.”

And yeah, I knew it was bad. But at that time, I really had no experience, so I just continued doing what I could do.

After making those mistakes, I went to my teacher and asked for advice. I also discussed the situation with my own school principal. Honestly, I felt really stressed. My mind was full of negative thoughts, and I kept thinking about how I would face situations like this in the future.

The biggest problem between us and the principal from the school I wanted to teach at was about the rules.

In IDN, if we want to teach somewhere, we usually communicate, discuss, and arrange everything online. But this school was different. They wanted us to come directly to the school offline. We had to survey the school, discuss things with the principal, teachers, and also the vice principal.

In my case, I couldn’t really do that. I needed to come to the school physically, while the chance of being accepted was still very small. Besides that, I was also tired, spending a lot of money, and wasting a lot of time.

Maybe some people would think:

“That’s easy.”

And honestly, I thought so too at first. But I had a limited amount of time, and I still had many other things to do.

Long story short, I canceled the “IDN Mengajar” plan because our rules and expectations were different. They preferred offline discussions, while we were only available online.

After that, I apologized to the principal for all of my mistakes and misunderstandings.

And yeah, maybe that’s all I can tell.

Conclusion

Even though this experience was stressful, I learned a lot from it.

I gained experience talking with principals that I had never met before. I also learned how to improve my attitude and communicate better with other people.

There were so many valuable lessons that I got from this experience.

I know maybe no one will read this :), but that’s okay. I just wanted to share something that I’ve been through.

See you :p