yesterday was the culmination of a week of fretting over a parental conference. this involved a student who plagiarized his summary of a book report. there was no question i had covered everything i could, and that the administrators were in agreeance with me. still, dreading the confrontation ruined my week.
as things go, it wasn't horrible, but i was very uncomfortable, torn in a lot of ways. the parents contention was that the student had not intentionally plagiarized. he just didn't read the instructions which said he had to write it in his own words. he didn't. they thought the punishment was too harsh, and that we had besmirched the honorable name of the child by saying he had cheated. they appealed to the principal, i think. the administrator handled it very well, but the parents were pretty much in denial about the whole thing. according to them, it isn't plagiarism if you don't do it intentionally...hmmm. they weren't accepting the fact doing it accidentally doesn't absolve you of the consequences. anyway, i guess it doesn't really matter. what i got out of it is that i need to look closer at why these types of things upset me so much.
truth of the matter is, even as i write this, i am anxious. i just don't know why i turn into a 3rd grader when some type of conflict comes up. the only things i can think of is that i guess i don't want to be disliked. i guess basically i not only don't have thick skin, i apparently don't have ANY skin. i think the reason i get so upset with people when they accuse me of things that i know are wrong is because it requires me to have to defend myself, and because i am honest, i can get taken advantage of. people love to play mind games to try and "win" and with me it is pretty much an easy victory. i don't go after people unless i am really, really right. it has to be something pretty spectacular for me to go off. even if i am in the right, i generally don't do the confrontation thing. i find it totally crass and offensive when people bully you into submission because they have so much brass that you let them have their way just to shut them up. i hate this kind of person, but they are out there, and some are in my life. i avoid these people like the plague because their rudeness just annoys me beyond belief.
so i guess the end result of all of this is that i need to think about it and see if i can do something to reverse the trend here. i am finding this to be something that seems to be getting worse as i get older, and the retreat mode is becoming familiar territory.
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