Beth Salerno

The Discomfort of Change

January 14, 2009 Author: Beth Salerno

I ended 2008 with a good portion of my life in boxes - again!  This time the move was shorter - less than 500 yards across campus from one former convent building to another.   A new space meant new relationships - a new faculty secretary, new colleagues down the hall.   It also meant new patterns -I walk different paths across campus, I teach in the same building with my office, I have files and chairs in different configurations.  

There is a Chinese saying “Three moves is equal to a fire”.  I always assumed this referred to the amount of stuff that gets discarded with each move, slowly whittling down to the essentials.  I am beginning to wonder if it also means that moves, like fires, provide a chance for regeneration, removing the dead wood and allowing new and luxurious growth.   After eight years in the same office and building, perhaps my routines needed to be shaken up a little (my books definitely needed to be thinned out!)  Walking new routes brings me to new corners of campus - I see the familiar with different eyes. 

That was clearly my experience going to and coming back from Korea.  Taking a year away from campus meant I resigned from all my committees, I gave up my advisees, and I set off to teach courses I had never taught before in a place I did not know.   I expected to grow and change in all that newness.  What I had not fully thought about was how new campus would be when I returned - all new committees, all new advisees, two years of new colleagues and new students to get to know.  At least for one semester I had my old office with its familiar patterns and comforts.  Now that too is changed.

Regeneration may be necessary, but it is not easy.  It requires loss.  I find I miss terribly some pieces of my time in Korea.  Some are obvious, like the free time created by a smaller teaching load.  That free time meant trips to the public baths, cultural events, dinner with students, Korean films.  I miss the daily walk past the women selling vegetables, the two French bakeries, the supermarket on my way home.   Green tea chiffon cake.  Seollantang (beef soup) and date-ginseng tea when I’m sick.  Grilled samgyeopsal (spicy pork) with friends.  But I also miss the openness to change that came with my Korean experience - the excitement of seeing and doing new things all the time.  It is as if, having done “new” for a year, I find it much harder to deal with change here at home. 

So as I write in my new office, I try to re-open myself to the excitement of the new, to the value of seeing things with a different eye.  There is discomfort and loss - and disorientation.  But as with my time in Korea, the rewards, the growth, are worth it.  Or will be when I unpack the last box.

Entry Filed under: reentry, Saint Anselm College