Back to Reality

For the last week, I've been blissfully lounging at home in the great state of Utah. I've said it before, and I shan't be ashamed to repeat it, but I thought as a student (not at BYU, of course) I looked forward to Spring Break. Well, it's nothing compared to how much I now looked forward to it as an educator.

It had been 12 weeks since Winter Vacation, and in those 12 weeks, my time off included 2 scheduled holidays, 2 field trips, about 10 unplanned, unscheduled, unannounced school events/short days for whatever reason, and 1 personal sanity day. Spring Break is literally a blessing for educators - they truly deserve it, and I understand that now like I never did before.

And now as the fantasy that was Spring Break comes to an end, I look forward with anticipation for the next 9 weeks. 9 weeks in which the all that I and my students have been working towards finally comes to a climax. 9 weeks in which there are no breaks, no prisoners, and no survivors. We are in this for the long haul people, so it's time to buckle down and get psyched for the roller coaster ahead. There are 15 school days separating now from California State Testing at my school. There are 15 days to somehow remind my students of all the material that we've been learning over the past 7 months, and that indeed at one point in the year, yes, we did actually cover this stuff. There 15 days to cover any of the last minute state standards that I feel my students can master, and yet, there are 15 more days for me to contemplate on how I am going to do this differently next year.

I feel badly for my students, because I don't think I was all the math teacher that they needed this year. But then again, I have to constantly remind myself that at some point, all teachers have to have that first year experience, and as hard as that might be to accept the fact that somewhere, students are having to be the guinea pigs for that year, there is a teacher that has to consciously deal with the fact that they are undeserving their students in a way that only they can fully realize. So I thank my students for their patience with me, and can only hold to my resolve that indeed, things will be much different next year.

Back to Spring Break -it was a dream, in more than one way. I spent some great time with the family, had some fun with my friends, and met some awesome new faces. I stayed at home, ate home cooking, and slept in the bed I grew up in. Sure, it's about 6 inches too short for me, but I actually slept in it - which is more than I can sometimes say for my home in San Francisco.

My apartment is on the bottom floor of my apartment complex, and I literally share a wall with the room where the trash bins are for the entire complex. When people toss out a particularly large haul, I can feel the reverberations of it in my apartment. And it's not that the walls are thin, because I don't hear anything else in the complex, it's just that the bins are REALLY loud. So that's pretty cool, because I'm like the unspoken trash bin monitor. If there's ever any funny business going on in there, I'm going to be all over it. But this isn't the only benefit...

Every Monday/Wednesday/Friday of the week, at precisely 6:00 am, I hear the gate to our parking complex rattle open. I can hear the chain working to slide the gate along the squeaky steel guides as the gate lumbers open to give entrance to a gluttonous beast. Its engine growls lowly as it lumbers down the drive to the parking lot, and then let's shriek an ear piercing *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* as it pulls into the room where the trash bins are. This noisy fiend clumsily latches onto the bins individually, and then shakes the life (or garbage) out of them as it empties the bins into its fat belly. The entire process takes less than 5 minutes, but the garbage truck is 100% impeccable on its timing, and it's 100% irritating. Particularly so on Monday's, as it stands as a physical notification that the weekend is officially over, and it's time to get back to work.

Tomorrow morning when that truck arrives, it's not just Monday, but it means that the dream that was Spring Break has officially ended.

T-minus 10.5 hours until reality hits.