Fighting against my instincts is a mind-breaking experience, and shredding history is one of the most difficult things I’ve done in a while.
[This was written in 2024, and I didn’t publish it until now.]
I recently started work at new schools, of course once again as an English teacher in Japan. No matter how hard I try, I seem to always change to brand-new schools every year, and it’s a very stressful process. Hundreds of new students, dozens of new teachers, a new commute, a new atmosphere… It takes weeks to adjust to that new life. But this year marks my 15th school–I’ve had so much experience with this that it’s nowhere near as stressful as it used to be.
Except for one thing–getting my work desks all set up how I like.
When I lived in Aomori, it wasn’t so bad–the English teachers usually only visited 1-2 times a week, brought their own computers and own materials, so they didn’t leave much behind. But since then, every school I’ve been to has been littered with random junk. And it’s been up to me to perform the act of shredding history.
Old outdated textbooks. Document folders from previous dispatch companies. Infinite numbers of worksheets, toys, worn-out stationery. Computers with all sorts of Word documents and pointless downloads–all publicly accessible to me because oops the IT system is always bad.
Previous English teachers have left behind some crazy stuff for me to sort through. I’ve found American money for no real reason. Farewell posters made by students. Medical prescription books sitting in random folders. Origami made by bored desk-warming teachers. Filled-out contract renewal forms that I guess never got submitted. And infinite piles of worksheets.
It’s very interesting to see what my predecessors were up to, the strategies they employed as teachers, to see through context their experience working at this place that’s still so new to me.
But it’s also been filled with teachers’ private personal information I have to chuck aside as soon as I see it. Or classwork from years-ago students that are literally illegal for me to possess. Or, for the most part, 50 copies of the same useless-to-me worksheet. And so, shredding history becomes my main work task for a couple days. I have to sift through years of disorganized documents, find what’s worth keeping, and then trash the rest.
Sometimes these documents are pretty old. Why didn’t my immediate predecessor do this already? Probably because it’s mentally taxing and extremely boring. And probably because their immediate predecessor also didn’t do it. And sometimes theirs, and theirs, and… You know how it goes.
This year, though, shredding history has taken on a whole new meaning.
At one of my newest schools, two entire filing cabinets were filled to the brim with dozens of paper-packed folders. And they were OLD.
I’m talking, not just random stuff from 2019 before Covid even happened. Not just stuff from 2012 when the English education system was extremely different. I’m talking JET Program guides from 2007. I’m talking worksheets from 2005. I’m talking teacher self-introduction files from *2003.*
Two thousand and THREE.
I was in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL when the documents in these folders were printed. A fresh 24-year-old English teacher in 2003 will have become a 45-year old by now. A parent, quite possibly of teenagers of their own. Mid-career in some totally different field, I imagine. And here I am, staring at their decades-old papers that nobody bothered to get rid of.
I found worksheets talking about the Iraq War. About Harry Potter as a big recent phenomenon. I found original copies of papers teachers made by physically cutting and gluing stuff onto a posterboard and then photocopying it. Stuff meant to be accompanied by a tape deck listening exercise.
These passed the threshold of being worthless papers nobody needs except to recycle. These have become legitimate historical artifacts. And, unfortunately, a whole lot of it has to be destroyed because it contains personal information of students from decades past. How in the world it lasted this long is absolutely beyond me.
So here I am, shredding history. I’ve saved what I could, just for posterity’s sake, but I still ended up shredding, I don’t know, 10 or 15 kilograms of stuff. It physically hurt, but it was also cathartic… Often for the same reasons.
I’m a bit of a pack rat, unfortunately. I hoard digital files to an embarrassing degree, and I have a hard time throwing away real-life junk I barely use. Somewhere between my grandparents’ messy treasure trove of a house as a kid, my family’s penchant for thrift store diving, and my staunch environmentalism, I developed a lot of neuroses about throwing stuff away. And here, shredding history, I’m erasing stuff probably forever.
Compilation books of students who traveled to another country for a homestay program. Detailed notes from teachers of 15 years ago about how best to reuse their worksheets (that clearly nobody even looked at). Printed email correspondences between teachers (why was this even saved?). Even the worksheets just printed from a Word document… Is there even a glimmer of a chance the teachers kept those .docx files? No. By shredding history, this stuff’s completely gone except memory.
But, it’s also kind of irrelevant for the most part. The people who made all this probably don’t even care if it’s gone. And none of it’s worthwhile to me–the paper worksheets use outdated, too-simple English for what Japanese students learn today. Plus, everything is so digital now that I barely print anything for class to begin with.
It’s basically fine for this stuff to fade out of existence. Maybe historians in 2355, searching through the ruins of Cyber Neo Osaka, would have been delighted to find evidence of early 21st century education systems on heavily degraded papers. But when 90% of it is irrelevant, and most of the relevant stuff is also too personal to keep, we can’t think about those historians. Sorry, dudes.
So, shredding history I go. The release of knowing I’ll be the last person to see most of it. The relaxation of overcoming my pack rat tendencies. For as many pangs of pain I feel, the world is exactly the same. Probably a little better now that I have actual cabinet space at my desk.
Have you ever gone shredding history before? I can’t imagine most people have done this. Maybe professional estate salesmen, or employees at a thrift store. Or maybe someone working in a deep corner of an ancient company office. If you have experience, though, I’d love to hear how it compares to mine here.
