The Real You

I received an email from a former student (former as in one whole week former) asking if she could be my friend on facebook. I had a pretty strict rule against being friends with current students (especially since many of them are close to my age and that opens a whole can O' worms), but I had phrased it jokingly like, I'm dorky and you'd be embarrassed by most of my antics.

So my student wrote this:

I remembered that you told us you have many funny pictures on facebook, but probably nobody want to see them, but I want to know what Miss Ernst looks like in her real life. (-:

I was struck by the thought that she thought I had a "fake" and a "real" life. Then I looked at my facebook page to see was I really all that different? Like Top Gear. Check, showed a clip in class. Love Jesus, check, talked about it often and did my best to imitate His life. Encourage others, check, got that. Look like a dork in 99% of my pictures, check, half my students during the last week of school said at one time, "Uh...Miss Ernst we need to take picture again. Your eyes are not open."

For me, you see what you get. This was after years of trying to fit in with "cool" teacher friends. Happy hour, Mill Ave (some of the most boring hours of my life) and other activities that weren't necessarily sinning(most of the time), but just not who I am. I finally realized, hey, I'm not having fun, I'm doing this for people who really don't care about me or what's important to me. Hmmm...

So here I am. Me. I'm still trying to root out the junk left over from years of compromising, but I'm happy to say that I think my student will be somewhat disappointed to discover that my real life, is well, my real life.