perspicacious.org

Graduation is over and done with, and I still can't quite believe it. I am in the middle of packing up every living thing that I own and getting ready to move back up to Albuquerque. I hate packing. It's tiring, it's messy, it forces me to do things to my carefully ordered household, etc. So maybe I'm a little bit OC, but who cares? I am going up to Albuquerque for Christmas this Thursday, with a car-full of stuff. My Dad and I are coming back down here sometime next week, and we will bring a trailer and move out all of the big stuff. Should be fun. Hopefully I won't have to move again for a while.

The graduation ceremony was last Saturday, and it was much better than I expected. It was a little over 2 hours long, the majority of that time being name after name after name. One of those names was mine. There were about 500 or 600 people on the floor, and we were arranged by college. I was sitting near a bunch of people that I knew, which was nice. There were people with balloons, paper airplanes, silly string… It made the time go by really fast. After the ceremony my Mom forced my brother and I to take pictures in our caps and gowns. He was the only one in the parking lot in a blue gown. Ha ha.

We went to dinner at La Posta, and I got a pretty cool gift- a palm pilot. Actually it's a generic one, and handspring visor, but it can run all of that palm stuff. The cradle doesn't work with my old computer, because it's USB, so I had to order a serial one, which should arrive later this week.

After dinner my brother and I went to O'Ryans, where there was a band playing. A friend of mine is the lead singer, and they are pretty good. I knew a lot of people there, but not so many as I usually do. That's one of the things I will miss about Las Cruces.

Well, I need to get back to packing. One good things about packing- you find all of the things you thought you'd lost. There are many things lurking in the backs of drawers and behind furniture, and you find them all when you move. Of course, you also have to clean, which kind of sucks.

So, it occurred to me that for practically the first time in my life I have a journal that I am actually interested in updating. It's never happened before. I do have journals from trips to Mexico when I was a little kid. I did write in those, but the writing stopped as soon as I came home. Maybe being in a new place inspired me to write, or something. Or maybe it was because we had no TV in the condo. I also had a journal that I wrote teenage sappy love poetry type stuff in, but that stopped, well, as soon as I realized I wasn't really in love. Anyway, it's unusual, that's all I'm saying.

I went to a party for pool employees last night. My last pool party. Tomorrow is my past day of work at the pool ever. How sad. At any rate, the party was pretty fun. It wasn't too big, but it was big enough to include a few silly drinking games. We had a white elephant gift exchange. I took a cool gift- one of those little magnetic sculptures. You know, with the metal pieces that you can build with on top of a strong magnet. What did I get? I got a hot pink fake cell phone and beeper. Even better, they make annoying beeping noises. Even more annoying than a real cell phone, since they aren't even useful. I'll put them in the kid gifts and prizes bag. At least the person I got them from had a good grasp of what a white elephant gift is supposed to be. One of the other people at the party got a candle shaped like a sperm. I guess I can't complain.

One more day of student teaching. We are having a party. I think that we will go outside and play Capture the Flag, which the kids love. Then we will come inside and have munchies (supplied by my cooperating teacher,) and I will give the kids their little gifts. I say that I won't cry, but that may change on Monday. Friday was really supposed to be the last day for us student teachers, but I have to make up the one sick day I took a few weeks ago. It will be weird to just walk out of there on a Monday and not come back, though. We did have a little going away party on Friday. The teachers filled a big box full of classroom stuff for us- markers and crayons and bulletin board borders and the like. It was pretty nice. I can't say that I am all that sad to go, but I do realize that I was lucky to do my student teaching in such a warm and friendly environment. I will be lucky to end up in another place as nice as this.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I figured I could take both at the same time and nearly killed myself in the process. Yes, that's where I'm at right now. Ever get the feeling that life is holding a bucket of manure over your head, waiting to drop it on you at a really inopportune time? Does everything always have to happen at inopportune times? If there is a God, I have this feeling that she is just up there laughing at me.

Really, now, things aren't as bad as I'm making them sound. I've just reached some weird climax, and I have 1000 things to do and no time to do them. I'm sick, but I still had to run around doing random last-minute s*&% all afternoon. That's what Thursdays are for. I left school feeling awful at exactly 3:15PM, went to the library, went to set up my placement file with career placement services, ordered a transcript, picked up a recipe from a friend, went to the grocery store, and am now in the process of making a pumpkin swirl cheesecake for the staff party tomorrow. Whew. At any rate, I did get everything done that I needed to get done today, and the cheesecake smells great.

Two more days of student teaching. I wrote a little card for each of the kids, and I am going to put little baggies of candy and a little toy together for each of them. We will have a party on Monday afternoon before I go. I showed my cooperating teacher how to check the class email account, and I will send emails to the class next semester. I'll bet the I will like the kids more in retrospect than I do on any given day. Don't get me wrong, I really like all of the kids as individuals, but sometimes, collectively, yikes. I guess that's probably true of adults, too. That reminds me– sometimes the behavior of the other student teachers at seminar classes really astounds me. Here are a bunch of people who want to be teachers, who probably spend all day trying to get a class full of kids to listen to them, and yet when they come to class they chatter and goof off and don't pay attention. Weird. Maybe they don't see the irony.

Well, the cheesecake is almost done, and it's time for ER. More later.

Note: The cheesecake turned out gorgeous, and it smells divine. I don't know if I can wait until tomorrow to eat it.

(Note: I wrote this for my seminar class, so if it sounds like I wrote it for school, well, I did. I'll let you know what grade I get on it. Just kidding.)

This semester has been, well, interesting. Almost nothing about student teaching was what I expected. I was constantly surprised by the kids in my class, my dealings with my university supervisor, and cooperating teacher, and by the things asked of me. Many of these surprises were good. The kids amazed me with their intelligence and creativity. Sometimes they saddened me with their behavior, and with potential that I saw not being used. I was surprised by the environment, by how warm and welcoming it was. And I was surprised at the differences between the teachers in my school and their teaching styles. I was surprised by my cooperating teacher’s competence and humor, by her ability to start each day anew. I was saddened by what years of teaching have done to her outlook. I hope that this semester has been as eye-opening for her as it has been for me. I have seen her do some new and exciting things in the past few weeks, and that excites me. The biggest surprise was, of course, how completely exhausted I was, and how much student teaching took out of me. It amazed me that there is a job that requires this much of a person. It is unfathomable to me that there are people that think teaching is easy. It is the hardest thing I have ever done.

I have had to reevaluate my motives and my plans for the future many times over the past semester. There were days, lots of them, when I thought I could never do this for a living. I still feel that way. There were days when I felt like I was doing something good and worthwhile, and I felt fulfilled. I still feel that way, too. At this point I am not sure if I want to be a teacher. I am not sure if I am mature, dedicated, and hard-working enough to handle a profession this intensive. I want to know that if I decide to teach that I am going to do it well. I can’t get into something like this if I feel unsure about my abilities. I am going to postpone my decision to teach or not to teach (that is the question,) for another few months. I am going to try substitute teaching and see how that goes. Then I will make my decision to start teaching or go to grad school. I know that I want to use my life to do something good, I am just not sure right now if teaching is that thing. I have never been one of those people who knew what they wanted to do at age 7. I still don’t know what I want to do. But the way I see it, I have the rest of my life to decide. Eventually I’ll find the place and the profession where I fit. It may be teaching and it may not.

Another exciting Saturday. It's December, now, and the weather was cloudy, cool, and a little windy today. Almost like the weather is trying to prove that it really is winter. Though I can't say it really succeeded, since I went out without a jacket.

I have 6 more days of student teaching, and I have to say that I am just waiting for it to be over. I am ready to not be working 12 hour days. It's exhausting. Today I slept until past noon. I haven't done that in a long time. I must have needed it, but when I sleep that late I always wake up feeling lazy, unproductive, and well, groggy. It isn't a good way to start the day.

I had the strangest dream last night that I was living in a monastery. I'm not sure where that came from, but who am I to question the inner-workings of my psyche? I was living in this tiny upstairs room with nothing but a cot and a little dresser in it. I read by candlelight and got up at 5 every morning for prayers. Then my parents came and took me away, and we went and stayed at a hotel somewhere, and I was so upset that I ran away. That's I woke up. Maybe tonight I'll go back there. It was peaceful. You don't find that kind of peace and solace in the year 2000 in Las Cruces, NM. At least not anywhere I've been.

Yesterday my cooperating teacher was gone (to Vegas, lucky her,) so I got to (had to?) teach by myself. The morning was OK, but by the afternoon I just wanted to go home. Most of the kids were being OK, but a few were really hyper. My one problem child tried to run away from me while we were out on the playground. I never did catch him, but he eventually calmed down. He threatened to send his mother in to talk to me, (about what?) but I seriously doubt that will happen. I certainly would like to know she exists and cares about her son, but I have this feeling she wouldn't come see me if the school was on fire. At this point I could care less. I just want the whole thing to be over. Not that I don't relish working 40+ hours a week for no pay.

So, that was pretty much my experience yesterday. Hopefully the next week will go by really quickly, and then I can be done with it. It seems clearer to me all of the time that I cannot do this for a living. I don't think I have it in me. I'm not enough of a masochist. I'll have to find a job that I can deal with and not take home with me. There is no line between teaching and the rest of my life, and I hate it. I need for my life away from school to be mine, and it just isn't. I'm not willing to give up that much of myself for a career, not now. Maybe not ever. I haven't decided. The way I see it I have lots of time to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.