One thing you might know about me is that I love learning. I guess that's probably a big part of why I'm a teacher. I always want to know more about a topic, whether it's related to my career or not. Sometimes this has gotten me in trouble. I would occasionally morph into "Harriet the Spy" mode as a kid, trying to overhear something intriguing or wander into places that were off-limits with the thought that I was having some sort of grand adventure or solving a mystery. Looking back now, I realize I was probably being annoying, but I was just ridiculously curious.
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I still have an obsession with learning. Although I already have a Master's degree, I'm seriously considering going back to school again (not anytime soon, but some day) to learn more, and you can bet I'm going to take advantage of the plethora of free online courses and teacher resources I see being offered this summer.
My obsession with learning comes into play with cancer, too, and I sometimes feel like I'm back in that childish spy mode again when I'm struggling to learn more about what the heck is going on in my body, as if I'm trying to find out more than I really should or like I'm going in the wrong direction.
The hard part is, at least from what I keep hearing, every cancer is different. So, theoretically, you could learn all there is to know about breast cancer but still not fully understand your own breast cancer. I'm finding that my doctors will take the time to explain things to me, which I appreciate, but that I always leave appointments with more questions. They answer the "how" and the "what", "when", and "where" really well, but I find that I always have more "why" questions. And maybe those are ones that doctors just don't answer or that are the toughest to answer or maybe they don't really have an answer. Like, "Why did I get cancer?" The one who came closest to answering that was the genetic counselor, who explained how a mutation in my gene made me more susceptible to this situation, but I'm not sure if there's an actual answer out there for why this happened to me at this particular time in my life. It's borderline frustrating to me, the endlessly curious, to not have an answer to this.
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I guess the "why" is the toughest question to answer in any situation. Those are the ones that can sometimes stump me in the classroom, like the students who ask, "Why do they call it a 'gerund'?" or "Why do we have to do MLA citations like this, but they do APA citations like that?" Those are the sorts of questions I usually don't know off-hand-- the ones I have to research after class so that I can have an acceptable answer for our next meeting. And sometimes there are more complex questions that don't have a simply answer or that have multiple answers or that simply can't be answered.
And I'm not sure if some of my questions can't be answered or if they could be, but with extra research and time. Sometimes I ask them, but sometimes I don't-- either because I don't think of them until later or because I can't think of a way to ask them in a logical way in the middle of an appointment. As I keep moving through this whole cancer journey, I think maybe I'll become better at knowing which questions to ask.
I hear a lot from my doctors about "the standard" for treatment and details about what the treatment does as well as a lot about "being aggressive" in treatment, but those aren't necessarily the types of answers I'm looking for when I ask my "why" questions. I guess, maybe, sometimes, I just don't hear the answer I want or maybe I'm not even sure what I want to hear. Maybe my constant curiosity comes down to this: even after my question is answered, I'll want to ask it again from a different angle until I feel confident that I know more about the topic. Maybe I'm still that annoying "Harriet the Spy" wannabe, or maybe it's just my way of dealing with this tough situation. Either way, by the time this is all over, I'm sure I'll have my own answers to these "why" questions-- I just hope that I get them right.
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