Playlist for Misfortune Cookies Episode 4: “Burning Out Teaching for America (TFA)”
By: Joyce Yihuan Li
Tags: Misfortune Cookies, Tfa, Mental Health, Asian American, Burnout

Hello — Joyce here! I’m assuming you’re here because you listened to episode 4 of Misfortune Cookies podcast, “Burning Out Teaching for America” (Season 1). Thanks so much for listening to my story.

Personally, I often use music to help me identify, express, and soothe how I feel — it also helps me discern what an experience meant to me. After recording this podcast, I felt moved to create an accompanying playlist to flesh out my story or just add another fun layer of human to human resonance. Anyway, I think it’s helpful to know the context around each song, so please enjoy these extra notes if you’d like!

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST (link)

1) Two — this who I am in a song. The first time I listened to it, I cried. I mentioned the Enneagram on the podcast. The Enneagram is a type of personality inventory where there are nine types. It’s unique in describing people primarily by their inner motivations: their greatest fears and greatest desires. I’m an Enneagram Two also titled “The Giver” or “The Helper.” This song is written from the perspective of someone who is an Enneagram Two and shows both their strengths and unhealthy weaknesses. The incredible musician, Sleeping at Last explains the lyrics and the here. (Free enneagram test if you enjoy self reflection.)

2) idontwannabeyouanymore — My weaknesses as an Enneagram 2 were on full display at work. I hated how I needed my students to like and respect me. I hated how I felt ashamed and couldn’t get the help I needed. I hate that I needed help. I hated myself for not being able to succeed and not being able to “JUST DO IT” as the immigrant American’s individualistic meritocratic dream impels us.

I didn’t want to be me anymore. Have you ever felt like that? I was so tired of myself and my same old flaws and my same old face and my same old body and life and sucky situation. In my journal, I wrote feeling like I had reached the ends of the edges of myself. I had zero capacity.

3) Dark Blue — watch the music video to the end :) it’s delightfully depressing.

Dark blue, dark blue

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?

Well I’m here with you

I said the world could be burning

’Til there’s nothing but

Dark blue, dark blue

~~

This flood is slowly rising up

Swallowing the ground

Beneath my feet

Tell me how anybody thinks

Under this condition

4) Weight in Gold — I would belt this song with all my strength in my little car.

“I’m pulling my weeeeeeeeight, iiiiiiiin, goooooooold

Call me anxious, call me broke

But I can’t lift this on my own”

5) Way down We Go —

“Oh, Father tell me, do we get what we deserve?

Whoa, we get what we deserve”

I felt like my situation was self-inflicted because of my terrible procrastination and because I just couldn’t deal with the workload and my classroom management was trash. The most of the other TFA Corps members my year were doing okay, or at least hung in there. Again, a lot of shame and guilt over my predicament. Even though, actually 5+ corps members my year also left and I knew two others who wanted to leave as soon as they got another job, I reasoned their situations qualified as more “legitimate suffering” because their schools were physically unsafe (students coming to schools with knives, fights every day, or threatening teachers). My school had fights regularly but never that bad, right?

“Oh, ’cause they will run you down, down ’til the dark

Yes and they will run you down, down ’til you fall

And they will run you down, down ’til you go

Yeah, so you can’t crawl no more”

This is kind of how I felt about my students *half laugh/cry*

6) Don’t Be Nice — Although I did my best in giving out disciplinary “strikes” consistently, if a student tried to argue their case or explain their situation that caused them to earn a “strike”…I struggled with being a pushover. The students themselves would yell at the other kids not to take advantage of me while at the same time doing it themselves haha. This song was my mantra to NOT BE SO NICE.

“DON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICEDON’TBENICE”

7) This Shit Sux — ‘nuff said in the title.

I would often refer to my kids (my students) as “little shits” — of course, never in front of them; it was usually in conversation with other TFA corps members. I didn’t hate any of my students and although it feels false to say I loved them because I quit and left, but I did care for them a lot. I really felt for their struggles of middle school life. You can probably remember: the desperately crucial daily dramas of who likes who and who told who, the annoying desk-mate who JUST WON’T STOP TOUCHING YOU AND YOUR STUFF, having no friends or people to talk to, only having 5 minutes to eat lunch because the line was so long, feeling stupid/incapable/overwhelmed by all the words on an assignment you don’t know, having a giant stain on your only white uniform polo, teachers getting publicly scolded in class, confusing you and your twin, peers asking you if you can even talk because you’re so quiet…I knew also that many of my students came from really awful home lives.

Yet all this was actually part of the problem. I empathized too much with their struggles (thanks to my Enneagram Two-ness). Referring to the kids as “little shits” was a reminder that their behavior WAS shitty and WAS TRULY unacceptable, even while they’re little and just children. “Little shits” simultaneously held their preciousness and their awfulness together. It also made me laugh and feel the teeniest bit better. Didn’t keep me from quitting though ahahhahahaha. ha.

8) Save Me — I’m a kpop fan! I’m not Korean though so I don’t understand any of the words without a translation. I was so lonely in TFA though — it wasn’t even funny. But at least this song makes it sound dope.