Reflection Eleven

“Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who 
would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”  Author 
Unknown
An analogy that I really love explains that friends are like roses. They are beautiful, but 
they have thorns.  In other words it’s a give-and-take relationship.  We never know what 
path our students are on or where they have been.  It doesn’t matter.  They are in our 
garden now and an important part of it.  How do you feel about this quote?  Do you think 
that it is important to get to know your students?   Explain.  Post to your blog.

A lot of people take the thorns analogy to mean that people will hurt you if you get too close. I don't take it this way though. I take it to mean that getting close to people will inevitably end up in one's being drawn into their problems and issues and in sharing their pain. 

It is really unavoidable. As people become closer they tend to experience more empathy toward one another. People tend to care more as they become closer. Problems that might once have been ignored now have a greater emotional impact. Lives become tangled and all the little thorns that a friend was once so discrete about become shared experiences. 

In my experience, this fact is especially important in interpreting. Interpreters live a constant struggle between being trusted and being impartial. Interpreters are supposed to be trusted and to be trusted means being friendly and open. Being friendly, however, often leads to real friendship and affection which can destroy impartiality. These friendships also lead to abuse of the interpreter's roll. And the unwary interpreter becomes a confidant whose number is on speed dial. Interpreters don't get paid for bailing their clients out of jail or for taking clients' pets to be euthanized.