The term, resiliency, has always been one of my favorite words along with its counterparts, adaptable, adjust, and flexible.
Merriam-Webster defines resiliency as:
: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change <emotional resilience>
I suppose the adjustment occurred from early on for my parents and family when they adjusted to unexpectedly learning their daughter had hearing loss. I imagine those early days for my parents were ones of a wide mix of emotions. Some of these emotions come out in a story my Dad often likes to tell that revolves around a prominent Children's Hospital in a nearby state declaring I was a child with retardation and expectations were not very high for the two or three year old Meg. Yet, my parents adjusted expectations and set the bar high and haven't looked back since.
The earliest memory I have of the word, adaptable, is when I left the Catholic school to go to the public school in 7th grade. My Mom understandably so was worried about the transition in going from a tight-knit small class of 10 students to what, at the time, seemed a HUGE school (i.e., 170+ students in the 7th grade). One of my favorite teachers at St. Joe's, who taught me in 5th grade, reassured my Mom and said, "Oh, don't worry, Megan has always been adaptable". I remember asking my Mom what exactly she meant by that expression and wondered what I had done in 5th grade to give Ms. Bednar that impression.
Fast forward eleven years to my first year teaching in Pennsylvania when I was given an incredibly LARGE caseload that had me driving from Frackville to Shrewsbury to all areas of York and beyond as well as dealing with a school district who had had very negative experiences with the previous itinerant assigned to it....as a first year teacher, I didn't realize that having so many schools spread out so far, having to repair and build new relationships within the one district, and not having enough hours in the day to see all the students of varying needs was a bit much. However, I rolled up my sleeves and tackled the seemingly impossible schedule which earned me the nickname from my first supervisor: Meg Rubber Band K. for my flexibility.
Now, here I am ten years later, about to complete my dissertation next month and my old friend, "resiliency", has emerged as one of the themes within my results. Looking back at the PhD journey, from day one, I've been knocked down in both my personal and professional lives. My first summer here my car was totaled and unexpected medical/car expenses piled up....relationships back home and here have evolved...disappointment and heartbreak have occurred...manuscripts, grants, and conference proposals have been rejected...competitions have been lost...2 Bs were earned---I know, I know, some are rolling their eyes at this one but at the time, it was pretty devastating so cut me some slack! ;)
However, on the other hand, I've had the honor of watching my NC niece and nephews grow up and being a part of their lives while living here...I've met some amazing people along the way who have taught me so much through mentoring, advising, & just being in my life...have grown closer to God through these trials and tribulations and realize just how much I have to learn in my faith...found a church home/family...have been able to travel to places I would never have otherwise been able to visit due to successful conference presentations...have improved my writing to try to make the manuscripts better...won a few competitions...have made a tiny contribution to my field in my own way...have impacted future teachers through my teaching (which is the whole point of doing this!!!).
So, having said all of this, I had to chuckle as I cleaned out my school email this morning and stumbled upon these two articles that were sent to us.
The first link might help those of you not in higher education to understand a little bit about the long hours and endless revisions that I've been doing. One of my favorite parts of this link is this:
We are in the business of getting shot down only to find strength to learn from failure and emerge stronger on the other side. If you’re not resilient, you are going to have a very hard time in this line of work – it doesn’t matter where your courage to endure comes from as long as you keep moving forward.
The second link encourages us to embrace and even learn to love rejection. This can be applied to all aspects of life. How many of us would rather walk the straight and narrow line playing it safe so they don't get hurt? One of my take away points from this article is this:
Only recently did I discover research showing that, for success in careers, persistence in the face of failure is as important as intelligence.
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