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Welcome back to another highly anticipated blog post from the greatest blogger to ever blog (and most humble). I’ve been busy busy with the opening of school and I’ve started teaching. For this month’s blog let’s talk about how teaching has been going, happiness, and we’ll finish with some fun stories. Leave a comment down below for the chance to win a prize! Also, if you like quotes you’re in luck, this blog is full of them!
“It is good that god kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all. ”
I started teaching this past month. My first day I didn’t know I would be teaching until I was handed a schedule that said I had a lesson in 20 minutes. Thankfully 20 minutes was more than enough to prepare a full lesson plan that I delivered flawlessly. I am teaching four periods of physics per week for one class of about 45 students, just 160 minutes of lesson time in total. I’m supposed to start teaching math soon too. Teaching has been enjoyable but challenging for various reasons. First, the students speak next to no English and the physics terms that they’re learning are new to them even in Swahili (good thing ChatGPT speaks Swahili). Second, it’s hard to improve my teaching when my periods are so infrequent. Third and most challenging, students in general here work mainly off of memorization and their understanding of concepts suffers as a result. Since schooling is done in English but their English comprehension is not absolute, their notes will be written in English and memorized in English with little understanding, then regurgitated for test questions. For example, if you ask an average student “what is two plus two?” They will respond “four” not because they understand two and two makes four, but because they’ve memorized four is the answer to that question. Math in Tanzania is referred to as “ugonjwa wa taifa” or “the disease of the nation,” even by math teachers. But all is not lost. I have never seen students try harder than I have here. On test questions for topics that the students weren’t prepared for, they will spend the remainder of their testing period trying to do them. Often to no avail, but the effort is what counts and is so encouraging. Student motivation—often one of the biggest challenges in teaching—will not be hard to come by. I started offering office hours, pitching it as a time where students can show up and we can talk about life, they can ask questions about physics or other subjects they’re struggling in, or they can get homework help. For the first office hours session every single student showed up and they asked me about my life and America, what its like, what my favorite foods are, and how many girlfriends I have (this is a normal question in Tanzania). For one of my answers I told them that many people like to eat tacos and they’re a very popular food for many people every Tuesday. I had to clarify this, because in Swahili, tako means butt cheek (singular). For each office hours session since, all the students continue to show up and we just do example problems. I even had a student come up to me and ask me about a topic we hadn’t even covered yet. I guess now that I’m a teacher I have to like teachers pets.
Just like after finishing a great book, it is hard to follow up in life after a period of happiness. Following up a great book with a good book can make even the good book seem lackluster or even mediocre. The period of happiness can sour even the sweetness of the many good things that may follow. This cliche of living in the past was something I thought only happened to other people or in movies or in books, but never me! Out of college I found myself not necessarily unhappy, but not loving life as I felt I should have. I thought maybe I had too good of a time in college, maybe I made friends too good, maybe I enjoyed myself too much, and I resented the cliche of it all. It felt like I’d been to a concert where the opener is way better than the main act. Let’s take a look at some data so I can seem credible (feel free to skip this). Figure 1 below shows the general trend for life satisfaction, also known as happiness, among United States adults—though many would consider me a child, this data technically applies to me too.¹ We note a sharp drop in life satisfaction through the early twenties which typically lasts through mid-life. Despite my awareness of this curve at the age of 23, I found myself caught in the downward trend of life satisfaction. But I, the most humble and hard-working intellectual you know must be able to break this curve. Although lows can make the highs feel that much higher, I think I’d still like to minimize those lows.
Figure 1
Figure 1 is based on data using the question “In general, how satisfied are you with your life? Very dissatisfied,…., very satisfied.” scored from 1 to 4. To aid in understanding the size of the age effect, the coefficients on marital separation and unemployment in a lifesatisfaction equation here are approximately -0.3 and -0.3.¹
“The good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.”
In my mind I had narrowed my options down to two before I quit my last job: join the Peace Corps, or work on a cargo ship and be a sailor. And so I’ve come to Tanzania in search of happiness and adventure. Looking for happiness wasn’t a conscious decision, but something I realized I did inadvertently after having reflected on my happiness of the past few months. There are many definitions for happiness, or rather, attempts at defining happiness. The attempt which most resonates with me recently is Aristotle’s “activity in accordance with virtue.” I would say by no means am I a virtuous person, but whatever I’ve been doing to affect such satisfaction in the past month must align with my values, whatever those may be. Service, teaching, and living in a community in need seems to scratch all the itches of fulfillment. It may not be surprising to anybody but me, but it sure felt like throwing a dart in the dark. This is all to say that I’m doing well, feeling fulfilled, and have gained so much perspective that I can’t even conceive of a future scenario in which I am not winning. And to you, reader, I present you Figure 2 below showing data I’ve collected through my own research and study. I urge the reader to endeavor in the pursuit of activity in accordance with virtue such that he or she may also fit the curve of Figure 2.
Figure 2
Figure 2 above is the happiness of Ryan compiled using data collected over a period of 25 years. I guess maybe it should say “projected” happiness. Oh well.
“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.”
“One day is enough for a man to know all happiness.”
My house flooded the other day during a torrential downpour the likes of which I’ve never seen. I was at the school during the rains and went home to a foot of standing water. I called my teacher friend and said, “kuna bahari ndani ya nyumbani kwangu.” This translates to “there is a sea inside my house.” I don’t have much furniture, so much of my stuff was on the floor and got wet. Fortunately, I am a poor volunteer and have almost no valuables! My teacher friend proceeded to show up with 32 students that drained the water from the house, cleaned the mud from the floors and left it even cleaner than it was before the flood. Unfortunately the only room that wasn’t affected by the flood was my bathroom, which was the only room that actually needed the cleaning, and the only room with an actual drain. The next day when I told my school headmaster that my house flooded he says to me, in English, “this is Africa.” Now whenever I go into the village everybody asks me if I like to swim.
Months ago I received some home roasted and ground coffee that I put in my backpack and never took out. The coffee helps with smell and deodorizing, so if I throw a shirt in there it comes out smelling like fresh coffee! However, one particular day I got caught out in the rain without my umbrella. It rained so much that my backpack was completely soaked through. When I made it back to my house and opened my backpack I was surprised with a pool of coffee in the bottom of my backpack. This backpack coffee may have been a world first, and it didn’t taste that bad either.
Because of the flood I’ve added gutters to my house, but to get the materials to build the gutters I had to go into town. I went with another teacher and we successfully purchased everything and hopped on a bus to get back to the village at dusk. During the return, the bus broke down and we were stuck in a different village. Since we were sitting in the back of a crowded bus, it would have been impossible to get out of the bus without making other people get out too. Knowing this and seizing the opportunity of the breakdown, the other teacher climbs out the window and tells me he’s going to stretch his legs. I stayed, enjoying the sights, sounds, body heat, and smells of the crowded, broken down bus. When the other teacher returned, I saw he was carrying what looked like a bag of produce. As he climbed back in the bus, I heard a squawk and saw he had come back with a whole live chicken. The old lady sitting next to us had no reaction except for asking him how much he bought it for. When he answered all she said was that he got ripped off. We sat while they fixed the bus, got it running, and we got back to the village: the old lady, the teacher, the chicken, and me.
During the rains my village’s electricity tends to cut out, which has happened to be almost every day for the past few weeks. With the rains my solar is ineffective, making electricity a scarce commodity. Being a boarding school, students are forced to go to bed and are unable to study without lights when the sun goes down. Knowing this, I had a serendipitous encounter with a former Peace Corps volunteer and I visited the orphanage that she had built in a nearby village. While I was visiting, she pointed out a generator that she was trying to sell, and I told her that my school is actively looking for a generator and it would really help us out. She told me she would let me know, and a few days later she told me we could come buy it for a crazy discount. This was the way in which we brought electricity to the school.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this version of Audible presents: Ryan’s Blog. Just kidding, this isn’t an audiobook! You may have gathered from this post that I am having a good time. That could not be further from the truth. These days I know nothing but despair, sadness, and hopelessness. The other day I lost my Swiss Army knife tweezers and I feel empty inside. Thanks for reading! I miss you all and I’m looking forward to having someone visit. Whoever visits me first gets a cookie. Don’t forget to comment for the chance to win a prize!
Love,
Ryan
¹Blanchflower, David G., and Andrew J. Oswald. “Do Humans Suffer a Psychological Low in Midlife? Two Approaches (With and Without Controls) in Seven Data Sets.” The Economics of Happiness, edited by Mariano Rojas, Springer, 2019, pp. 439-453. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15835-4_19