Our hopes are that this is my last year of teaching for a long time, and while there are many things I know I will miss about being a teacher, I know for a fact that I will never once miss the intense workload and mental strain of grading papers and tests (especially when I have to do so at home, on my own time, over a weekend no less).
Ends of trimesters (and the period of time right before midterm) are always the worst, with 60+ hour workweeks and squinting over papers written in poor penmanship and fielding calls and emails and visits from frustrated/angry/worried/anxious/pleading parents who wonder if there is anything their child can do at the 11th hour to make up for a whole trimester of not having done much of anything at all.
I will never miss all that.
But one of these days, when I’m not so bogged down with essays and when my eyeballs don’t feel like they’re going to pop out of my head (like one of those squeeze toys), I will write a post about all that I WILL miss–the thrill of the challenge, the constant striving towards improvement (on both my part and on the part of my students), the occasional realization that I really and truly (without question) made some lasting impact on at least a few of these young people as they go on with the rest of their lives…
One day I will write a post about all that.
For today, you get frustration and two sorry pictures.
Oh, and a few links to posts that I wrote when I wasn’t so bogged down with argument essays and Spanish tests:
One Year Ago: Bucket List Item – Photographing the Slot Canyon
Two Years Ago: Sugar is My Ultimate Frenemy (as true for me today as it was then, unfortunately)
Three Years Ago: Flashback to when my purse almost weighed 10 pounds
