49: The Daily Performance

Teacher Rhianna is a new type of on

For the past 11 years, I have been celebrating my birthday alone. Not grouchy alone at home ruing the day. Happy alone, because I take a vacation in its honour. It started as a tradition to deal with a smaller social circle and discomfort with asking medium friends to join me on my birthday when they might not feel that close to me. Its origin as a coping mechanism has now become my cherished must vacation of each year. I can’t sleep in my own bed on my birthday is my new rule. During the pandemic, I even took road trips to Edmonton’s southern rival Calgary to have a short escape and a hotel bed.

My return to living in my Canadian hometown of Edmonton in 2018, which was the return to the majority of my bosom buddies, didn’t stop the tradition. For so many years I had done away with being the centre of a group’s attention, and I didn’t want to return to it. For so many years before that, I celebrated among friends because that is what you’re supposed to do. We allow for those who don’t like celebrating their birthdays, but in my 20s, I wasn’t comfortable articulating that or why I was uncomfortable. Because nights of silly drunkenness with friends are supposed to be fun, and they are. It’s an age when the alcohol doesn’t hit so hard the next day, and everyone loves that moment of denouement with late-night pizza or shawarma.

Being the focal point of the evening is what bothered me. I love my birthday and heartily encourage everyone to treat it like the one day a year when they should be as selfish as possible. I don’t like what I now feel is a performance of birthday: having to be happy in front of everyone, or having to enjoy everyone looking at you, whether it’s while opening gifts or staring at candles.

I don’t do well with people looking at me. Or having to perform.

Which is why it’s ironic that I now teach and largely enjoy it. I enjoy being in front of people and trying to help them learn something.

But performing and being the centre of attention are parts of teaching, and I guess I’ve just become more used to or better at them (only those who evaluate me know the answer).

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Performing on the job is something I hadn’t done for a long time before moving to Saigon. I had food and beverage and retail jobs in my early 20s that required me to be friendly, helpful, and accommodating. I knew the landscape. But spending more than 15 years as an office worker with basically no client-facing responsibilities left me extremely out of practice.

Being civil-hopefully-more-like-friendly to office coworkers didn’t feel like a performance to me because getting along is the requirement. After some time, people become used to each other’s quirks, and then it is much less effort to get along. I also was extremely fortunate to have shared office spaces with a number of people who I consider former work spouses. Our level of closeness meant that it was easy, more like pleasurable, to work side-by-side. It also meant that when one of us wanted to be moody, it was okay (I’m looking at me).

The type-type grind of my previous desk work had no element of performance. Now that half of my working hours—and the only paid ones—include it, I am much more exhausted working as a teacher than I anticipated, even setting aside that I consider myself to be a low-energy person to begin with.

My first few weeks, maybe even months, of teaching here were tough when it came to my nerves. I think they ran high throughout entire lessons. I’ve never done any acting nor tried to, but I felt as though my two-hour lessons were two-hour auditions. Auditions that were for the students, for the teaching assistants (I still feel they silently judge), or for management. Having the job isn’t getting the part; it’s a constant hamster wheel of practicing and auditioning.

Like I said, I’m used to it now. But that doesn’t mean the nerves are gone. Because, me. Even when I’ve reviewed my lesson or know there’s nothing outstanding, about an hour before I leave for work, I feel the prickles of stress within. In that last hour, I no longer do any lesson planning. It’s my pre-performance ritual time. If I’m ordering delivery, I place it; the rice cooker is going otherwise. Then I do my The New York Times games: Wordle, Strands, Connections, and The Mini, in that order. While I eat I watch TikTok. I change, then head out on foot for my commute.

When I first start at any job, there is an element of performance with new coworkers. Now that I know all of mine well, the pre-class staffroom time gets the “on” muscles going: talking, laughing, being in a good mood. And then it’s showtime. The elevator down to the classrooms always fills me with a bit of insecurity-fed dread. Twice a week, I often walk down the hall with a colleague who enters their classroom before me. As soon as they enter, I hear their voice boom to greet their class. A few seconds later, I will do the same. And then try to keep the audience engaged as best I can (a losing battle often, for me) for the next two hours.

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The exhaustion I feel is purely mental. As someone who identifies as an extroverted introvert, I have no problem starting or leading a conversation with a single person—stranger or friend—for hours. It’s why I’m either the best or worst person to sit next to at the bar or on an airplane. But ask me to work a room or mingle, and I’m leaving or not attending at all. Something about the power element of the classroom (I know things, they don’t) makes it easier for me; it must be why I handled presenting in front of my classmates throughout school and university with no issues.

I have found that working six days a week with the now heavier element of performance makes it harder to charge my introvert battery. I want all the alone time I can get or protect to balance the stimulation of the classroom. That I feel I’m in a strange moment with my socializing makes it easier at times to have the alone time I feel I need. Absolutely I wanted to shift away from a job that had me within a cubicle environment, but it didn’t tax me in the same way that teaching does.

My god, and I’m not even a “real” teacher. I bow down a thousand times over to all the real teachers in my life who do what I cannot. Same to all of those I know in retail and food and beverage industries facing customers, performing for customers, at every moment. In my short time working in both, I would have said before that the fatigue I felt was the physical element. 20 years later, I know myself so much better and can understand that no, it wasn’t all the carrying, walking, or stair climbing. It was the being on when talking to customers.

Collapsing into a television show at the end of the day back then was about, is always about, having time to turn off.

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Being the centre of attention is what’s most difficult for me. I’ve never enjoyed people looking at me. I have always thought they’re looking at something that’s wrong with me. Because I’m always thinking about what’s wrong with me.

What’s funny about being here in Vietnam is that people are often looking at me. It doesn’t bother me in the same way because my brain has all the reasons why they’re looking: I’m different; I’m foreign; I’m white.

The classroom does nothing for my insecurities. All the eyes, all the eyes watching, wondering, or hiding worry or confusion. I often try to avoid making eye contact while I’m teaching to not overthink about what’s going on in the students’ heads. But me being me means I still do, only adding to the load of my mental fatigue.

The real performance is me trying not to show my discomfort with being watched by them.

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One thing that I don’t want to gloss over is that I don’t use performance to reference being inauthentic or insincere. I’ve made mention before of my uncertainty with how to view my relationships with service staff I am friendly with because it’s hard for me to remove the money element. But I never think they are fake nice to me, or only talk to me because our moment together ends in a transaction.

This is part of why I hate the “fake it until you make it” aphorism. Yes, in any job, you might have to fake your knowledge or know-how, or fake being nice to coworkers or customers, for any number of reasons. Or, you might feel uncomfortable with a particular workplace decorum. I felt this acutely when I moved back to a Canadian office culture after my years in New York City. You’re still you, just (necessarily) toned down.

Once I enter the classroom, I don’t turn into some happy-go-lucky, uber positive, funny person. I just try to put some of my positive qualities (curious, conversational, geeky) front and centre while also attempting to be an effective teacher. I am still me, just (necessarily) louder.