Hi! Have we met? I'm an over-achiever. Oh, wait. I'm also a procrastinator. The combo of these two attributes can be quiet frustrating. Being an over-achiever and a great planner would be do-able. Or being a regular- (or even under-) achiever and a procrastinator would at least not bring tears or craziness. But alas, I have been plagued by both my whole life. Oh yeah, and the final blow: I don't know when to say "no".
I have been feeling like my plate is a little full as of late, and this week I finally did what I never do - under-achieved. But let me back up and explain...
I am the Gospel Doctrine teacher in my ward (for non-Mormons: I am a weekly Sunday School teacher for adults). I LOVE this calling (assignment). It is by far my favorite. Many of you know that I taught seminary in Utah, so teaching from the scriptures used to be my job. It's hard to motivate yourself to study the scriptures as thoroughly as you need to to teach them when you're not teaching. So I really missed those years I spent preparing for, and teaching, out in Utah. This new calling has gotten me back in the scriptures at a depth I have not yet been before, and I can really feel the Spirit working in my life as a result. I really feel myself changing, getting better.
Last Sunday, our lesson was on Jacob chapter 5. (We rotate which "standard work" we study every year. Some years we study the Old Testament, some the New, and this year, we are studying from the Book of Mormon all year). Jacob 5 is a doozie of a teaching assignment - the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon, and one that needs a lot of introduction and explaining. When I was teaching seminary, we would usually spend at least 2 days just on the one chapter (2 days being 2 50-minute class periods). In my Sunday School class, we just got 1 45-minute class to cover 3 chapters (5-7). So I wanted to make the most of it. Help those who already know all the symbolism and explanations find something new, and help those who are thoroughly confused by it find understanding for the first time. The result was me creating a "vineyard" in the classroom. I created "olive trees" that were 3-D and could stand on their own, each one representing a different tree mentioned in the allegory (tame, wild, on poor soil, poorest soil, and good/rich soil). I then made branches (both wild and natural branches) that could be moved from tree to tree and "grafted" via velcro. It was quite a project, but one I was proud of. And I do feel that the vizualization really helped the students. My SIL is the Gospel Doctrine teacher out in her ward in California, and she wanted to see how my trees and vineyard turned out. I told her I would do a blog about it...
The "natural branches" on the tame tree
A forest full of trees with natural branches grafted on
And more of the forest (my cat LOVED this forest - she thought we made it just for her)
The "wild" olive tree set up in the classroom
The "vineyard" - created big enough so that the trees could be spread to the "nethermost regions"
Anyway, since I am an over-achiever, I couldn't just have a tree drawn on the board, or one 3-D tree, or even a few 3-D trees with one or two branches for illustrative purposes. No, I had to have enough branches to be grafted, hewn down and cast into the fire, and gathered again. I read through the allegory several times to be sure I had an accurate representation. And then there was the fruit. Again, not just a piece or two, but several pieces of both good and bad fruit, to fully cover the trees they were associated with. But since I am a procrastinator, I didn't do any of this until Saturday night. Did I know that I was going to do this for my lesson earlier in the week? Yes. So why did I wait until the night before to get it done. I don't know. And I do it every week, no matter how much I try to prepare earlier. But at least usually people can't tell that I had 3 hours of sleep the night before...
So then the stake relief society leaders (ok, each ward = a congregation, and several wards = a stake, kinda like a diocese; and relief society = our church's woman's organization) asked me to teach a lesson at our annual women's conference. What was my topic, you ask? Not anything fun like "planning family events" or at least playing to my talents like "women in the scriptures". No, OATMEAL! Hence the reason you all got lovely emails from me asking for recipes, help, etc. This was a HUGE undertaking. I needed to make a cookbook that highlighted not only edible recipes, but herbal remedies as well (as requested by the stake relief society leaders), and samples of some of the recipes. In our church, we do not have paid clergy, adminstrative support, or any other paid ministry or assistance of any kind. We are a church of volunteering and assigning. So when we receive an assignment of this sort and agree to do it, we take on all the aspects of the project ourselves. So the task of compiling, typing, printing, copying, and binding the cookbook was all up to me. And being the over-achiever that I am, I couldn't just copy and paste each recipe that I received, oh no! I elaborated on what I had already received with recipes I had spent hours looking for online, and then typed each one individually. Of course I needed the formatting on each recipe to be the same! I even created text boxes - individually - for each recipe to make sure the ingredients stayed justified together, the titles, and the directions. Total time for that cookbook: about 27 hours of work. I designed the cover and printed it out like a booklet. I must say, I was very proud of myself (especially having never done anything like that before). To me, it looked like a professionally-created book (or at least not like a novice had created it). The only problem: the people who received the cookbook certainly don't care as much about it's appearance (or content, for that matter) as I do, if at all, and I'm sure many, if not a majority, of those cookbooks will end up in the trash or lost in someone's house. So why do I continue to push myself to do all this stuff to the nth degree?
And since the cookbook took much longer to compile than I thought it would (another downside to being a procrastinator - you never have an accurate concept of how long it will take you to do any particular task), I found myself on Friday night needing to make all the samples for the class the following morning. Michael stayed up with me pretty late, helping me bake and prep, but even he crashed around 2:00. What did the over-achiever/procrastinator do? Stay up 'til 4:30 baking, packing the car, getting the handouts together, and working on all other last minute details, then waking up at 6:30 to get dressed and head down to the church to set up for my class that would start at 10:30. Luckily, I did not procrastinate my set-up, because it took the whole time to prep the room, set-up the audio/video equipment, and make the herbal oatmeal recipes that we would be using for the class (they had to be made fresh - not prepared in advance). I spent part of the class talking about the food uses of oatmeal and it's health benefits (we watched an Alton Brown video clip from the Food Network), and part of the class having "spa time", where the women got to try out the herbal oatmeal recipes for themselves. While I was happy with the overall presentation, I was disappointed that more women didn't take advantage of the spa opportunity and genuinely wished I wouldn't have put so much effort into all the preparation. I planned for 40 women participating in the spa, and only about 10 did, so I had to throw away all the spa recipes I had prepared. And while I was telling myself that my over-achieving was unnecessary yet again, I found myself wondering "but what would have happened if 40 women had wanted to participate and you had only prepared for 10?".
But since so many of my friends and family who don't live close helped me prepare for this class and wanted to know how it went, I've included some photos of my setup.
The title of my class was "The surpises of oatmeal: beyond the cereal bowl". As surprising as it may be, I am terrible at visual displays, so I asked my mom for help. She said to put the various foods I made into cereal bowls and show how we can take oatmeal beyond the bowl. So here's some apple harvest muffins going beyond.
Here's "Shelley's Spa". I covered arm chairs from the lobby in old sheets and towels that my friends so generously donated to my cause (thank you friends!). Women could then put on aprons to protect their clothes (since unfortunately we were asked to dress in our Sunday best for the conference). Here are some women getting some oatmeal facials.
I even offered the women hot towels to clean off the oatmeal with. Megan was a good sport and not only participated, but let me take pictures of her as well.
And her skin was actually noticably softer after the facial. Plus she was much happier and relaxed after the facial as well. :)
So back to my under-achieving...
Since I procrastinated preparing for my oatmeal class until the week before the conference, it left me no time to prepare my Sunday School lesson for this week. And after two hours of sleep the night before, I went to bed at 9:00 Saturday night, and woke up only in time to get ready for church. No prep time what-so-ever. But luckily I taught all these lessons in Seminary before and have a repetoire of lessons in my brain (even if I have to dust the cobwebs off of them). However, someone needed a ride to church today and wasn't ready on time, and I kept forgetting things I needed for my unprepared lesson (oops, CD player - that went unused; oops, laptop - that didn't do what I wanted it to; oops, makeup - well that was a big one!) which caused me to delay my departure and even turn around and go home once. So of course I missed the sacrament again. And I went into my lesson totally unprepared and frazzled, without feeling the Spirit. Needless to say, the lesson was all over the place. I was hemming and hawing, I couldn't find scripture references that I was looking for, and the whole thing just didn't have any direction.
I never say no to opportunities to serve (well, hardly ever anyway). In fact, I feel I could really step up my service. But this time I said no to myself. No to another night of no sleep, of preparing a sheet full of quotes that does anybody really find useful after class is over?, no to worrying about having every last detail planned. And instead of making me feel better, it made me feel worse. Worse about not providing spiritual guidance for a class full of adults looking for it. Worse for not doing my part to fufil my obligations. Worse for not doing my best and living up to my potential.
So now it's Sunday night, and I'm dutifully preparing my lesson for next week, praying that before I die, I will find the right balance between over-achieving and under-preparing, between procrastinating and realistic timelines, between saying yes and saying no. Here's hoping...
