There are certain things that I have accepted that I am not good at.

• For instance, I am not good at not spilling.
• I am not good at throwing my clothes in the hamper.
• I am not good at chemistry.
• I am not good at art. I’m especially not good at crafts.

I am OK with this. So sometimes I think this fact alone, the fact that I’ve embraced my non-talents and don’t have to be good at everything, makes me NotAPerfectionist. 

But with the things that I’m good at… or the things that I get paid for… I struggle not to give it 74822% of my effort, and I struggle with the fact that 74823% of my effort still isn’t enough to get the job done.

When you’re a teacher, you are only human, and I genuinely believe that most teachers are altruistic souls worthy of SAINTHOOD, despite whatever crappy headline mars the face of Time Magazine these days.

So as an only-human teacher, I take pride when students ask me for letters of recommendation, or ask me for help with their college essays. I find it difficult to say no, no matter what’s on my plate. I like to help kids.

And yet I have this compulsive desire to comment on every claim, to unsplice every comma, to heimlich every thesis statement (you WILL cough up ANYTHING you’ve got, damnit!). I want to give CPR to limp analysis (unless CPR is the mouth-to-mouth thing, in which case, never mind). And if we’re continuing with this somewhat uncomfortable metaphor, I have a hard time divorcing myself from the idea that every little word my students write is not a tiny little human in need of medical assistance.

I have a COMPULSION to pore over every single word.

When sometimes I’m trying desperately to write the letters of rec, and assist with the college essay, and occasionally console a broken heart or two, because sometimes teachers accidentally get thrust into this role, I sometimes (all the times) find it difficult to give every single word, or even every single assignment, its fair share of my attention.

The problem about being a nonperfectionist perfectionist is that when you can’t be perfect at what you’re supposed to be good at, you no longer feel like you’re good at it.

And sometimes an annoying byproduct of being female is that when you don’t feel like you’re good at what you’re supposed to be good at, you don’t feel like a very good human.

I had to cower in Jeremy’s general direction like a little guilty puppy when I showed him my stack of grading that I’d just barely “graded.” My stack was huge. I apologized to him because I needed to apologize to somebody for not being perfect! I’m sorry, world! I’m sorry.

And don’t think that I don’t know that there are too many prepositional phrases in here and that my writing seems to have taken a nasty left turn and that maybe this makes me less of a human too.

I digress. I forget sometimes that “to err is human” (Thank you very much, Alexander Pope). I forget that my humanness is not attached to perfection, but perhaps what makes me human is the very fact that I cannot do it all, and I can’t do it alone.

So I will employ this out-of-context little edict, and admit to myself that YES! “To err is human!” But “To Forgive, Divine.” And at least to myself, in this instance, for tonight, I will offer myself a little Forgiveness.