[email protected]

In a message dated 5/19/2003 2:11:04 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:

> If others think I'm an expert or "guru" (NOT a term I've used about myself,
> but others have put it on, either joking or snarky or friendly, but others'
> writing) that was because they saw something I knew that they didn't. I
> didn't "take that on."
>
> Sandra
>

I'm kind of getting something that's happening here.

My partner Beth and I had a long discussion about a minister we know, who is
a friend as well as having been a minister we both worked with. Gail did
something that disappointed Beth. Nothing horrible, but something Beth
believed Gail was better than. (Gail, in retrospect, probably felt the same
way.)

Beth and discussed the fact that ultimately, ministers are people, and
sometimes they miss the mark. Beth agreed, but also said, "But I guess I
expect ministers to be better than that."

All ideas of religion aside, I think Sandra serves more as a minister than
and "expert." As a result, probably we all expect more from her. Is this
entirely fair? Well, maybe not, but there it is, and I'm sure that Sandra
knows that part of her reputation as someone people can turn to when they are
struggling with unschooling depends on her being able to maintain some of
that.

Then...lo and behold! Sandra is not perfect! Sometimes she gets cranky, or
tired, or pissed off, or just reaches the end of her rope with someone who
seems committed to not getting it. Sometimes she has trouble getting what
someone else is saying. Sometimes her patience just runs out. This e-mail
thing is hard, and Sandra, it turns out, is human.

The point here is not to excuse anyone -- minister, Sandra, Mother Theresa --
when they miss the mark, but to understand that we also have to take
responsibility for our own expectations of others. My experience of Sandra is
that Sandra takes full responsibility for when she turns out to be human.

There ya go, Sandra...ya went from being Expert to a minister.... scary, huh?

Kathryn



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Deborah Lewis

***There ya go, Sandra...ya went from being Expert to a minister.... ***

AND... you can even get ordained if you snip the add in the back of
"Rolling Stone." <g>

Deb L

[email protected]

In a message dated 5/19/03 4:06:09 PM, KathrynJB@... writes:

<< There ya go, Sandra...ya went from being Expert to a minister.... scary,
huh? >>

Yes.

Teachers get a lot of that, too, and I was a teacher very young. Twenty one.
And I found that anything I did was a matter for community scrutiny. And I
would say, "Hey, I'm 21," and hear, "Yes, but you're a *teacher.*"

In the SCA, same thing. I was grumpy at something a friend did yesterday,
and said of all the knights I respected most I didn't expect HIM to screw up.
Why did I have to throw in that he was a knight? Because he was. Because
he's so many people's favorite and a role model.

I could have said "of all the dads I know" or "of all the cops I know..." and
guess what? It was a cop-job anyway. I wanted him to write a letter of
recommendation to get Marty into the Junior Police Academy camp (which he did
write, and I thought it was way late, but turns out they extended the
deadline so I got better). But because I thought he had screwed up, I went
for the highest rank, and that was knighthood, not police-officer-tude.

Sandra