100TWC - Day 54: Health and Healing

I had a nasty experience recently. Immediately after it, I decided to make it the subject of this post, as part of the writing challenge. I've been coming up with ideas for each day's prompt in advance (which shouldn't come as a surprise) and at the start of the piece I check back at the few words or couple of short sentences I've written in my "theme pack" (a document that lists the themes, my ideas for the themes, how many are left to write, how many to decide what I'm going to write, etc), get the idea in my head, and set off writing.

Today, it's a couple of weeks since the nasty incident and I've calmed down a bit. With those two weeks' perspective I'm no longer angry. Just sad, and... well... a little resigned. Resigned to human nature.

Some of you already know I'm a Spiritualist healer. To anyone that's just visiting, or is a regular who didn't know that for whatever reason, there are a few pages about it (what it is, how I came to be one) on my website. Shortly after I finished my training, the Spiritualists National Union (SNU) asked me if I'd like to be a tutor for the course I'd just taken. It's a correspondence course (there is a practical element to the healing too, of course. You can't be healed by post) and they were in need of new tutors. Since I'd done so well on the course, achieving the highest mark in my graduation year and winning a prize for doing it, they thought I'd make an ideal tutor.

So since 1997 I've been looking after students from all over the UK and, more recently, overseas, as the SNU spreads its influence and offers the course to people from Europe and beyond. I've had some excellent students in all that time, many lovely comments, some that have required a little more help than others, some who have really struggled but even so done their best, and others who have for one reason or another given up part way through or even not started at all, after having registered.

But until the Sunday before last I have never, ever, been engaged in a shouting match with a student. These are, after all, people who are looking to be healers. Empathic, sympathetic, warm and generous people who want to give their time to help make others feel better. So not the kind of person, you would think, to have an over-inflated ego, a sense of moral righteousness, or - worse - one of entitlement where they believe the highest grades should be handed to them on a plate for a minimum of effort. Such were the sentiments behind the irate phone call I received from this particular student.

One of those people who ask a question and then immediately talk over the answer. Because they're not interested in your answer. They're only interested in telling you what the answer is. What the answer you should have given them is. And that answer is never a C grade. I've never had a C grade in my life and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you give me one now. I'm a teacher and assessor myself, I'll have you know. All courses all over the UK are governed by this or that official body and I know the rules. Show me where in the question it tells me that I need to answer in the way you say? The question asks for X and I've given you X so I should have top marks. I'll take this as high as I have to in the SNU. I'm not having it. I've let it pass and let it pass but I can't take it any more. Everyone at my church is AMAZED at what I've had to put up with and on and on and on.

A lot of the above paragraph is paraphrased or implicit (rather than explicit) in what he said but that was the clear message. Some of it is the real words. And with the best will -- and all the patience -- in the world I found it impossible, eventually, not to rise to the bait. Although I started off calm, I ended up literally shaking with rage. Which, you know, is the most annoying thing of all really. My reaction. The fact that I lost it, when all I really needed to do was keep calmly putting forward my view. My correct view. My 15-year-experienced-tutor view. My 55-year-old world view*. He hadn't done the work. For months he has been trying to get away with the minimum necessary to scrape through the course. And for quite a long time I've shrugged and warned and cajoled and suggested, and been ignored. And this time, finally, the chickens came home to roost and they didn't taste very nice. And there was a clucking and a ruffling of feathers in the hen house.

I hung up in the end. In the middle of a continued tirade from the other end, I hung up. And emailed him to tell him not to call again. I have no idea if he complained, or how high, or whether he's demanding a different tutor, or what. I strongly suspect our student/tutor relationship is too badly compromised to continue, which is a shame (in a way) because he's only one question away from finishing the course. If he can swallow his enormous pride and just knuckle down and get on with it. But I doubt that will happen. And I don't much care either way. One bad apple in a barrel of almost 150 students over 15 years. It's not a bad track record. The guy who organises the training courses was worried it would put me off being a tutor. I have a thicker skin than that. Yes, I was upset, but I got over it.

But as I said right at the off, my main feeling now is one of sadness. That someone with that amount of hubris cannot set it aside and focus on the long term goal. If he wants to help people, then he really needs to be able to understand them better. And do the work.

*His opening gambit, at the start of the phone call, had been to say "I don't know how old you are, but..." so I told him. Quite took the wind out of his sails to learn I was three years his senior. I'm certain he was expecting me to be younger so that he could play the "age and experience" card on me. Shame ;0)