Devolution

I had the most disgusting experience today. I had turned in a paper for my Hemingway class, and I knew it was not what it should have been when I did. There was something nagging at me about it, and I stayed after class to talk with my professor about it.

Once he started pointing out ways to make it better, it suddenly clicked with me what the problem was. I was looking at a high school paper, not a graduate student's paper, not a paper that is up to what I used to write. Apparently, I have become what I teach: a three-point thesis and a military outline structure.

I have devolved without knowing it. I feel ill. If I can get my kids to write at that level, I'm happy, but only because they have a good basic grounding from which to grow into that subtle, organic style that is a mature form of writing. From myself, I expect much more. Granted it's been a long time since I wrote about literature, but that the basic mechanics have so invaded my writing as to become obtrusive is unacceptable. It's like seeing the mechanism behind the illusion.

I don't know if I can get back to what I used to have. Maybe I've been hamstrung by my own teaching. All I know is that I have a week to see if I can refine this graceless lump into something with some elegance, and am definitely going to try.

I Heard the News Today

After taking a vocabulary test today, one of my students told me that a former student had been shot and killed over the weekend. All that potential wasted, cast aside like something of no value. I still can't believe, with the typical denial of the living, that anyone that young and alive can be dead in a box.

He was never much on school. He refused, albeit politely, to even do things that would have been simple for him. He had no interest in it, and always struck me as a person simply humoring another until it was okay to leave. I wish so much that something we had done had caught his attention. Maybe if anything had, all that latent talent wouldn't be gone now. Maybe he would have chosen a path other than the one that led him to a grave before he was 25.

I wrote a poem for him. It's the first time I've been moved to words in a long time. I think it will be my entry in this year's competition. If it wins, I think that would be a fitting tribute to him.

Birthday Surprise

I had the nicest surprise today. My fourth period class brought me cupcakes, dill pickle chips, and PEZ. One of my coworkers gave me a funny card. It was nice to be noticed.

Most of my birthdays are terrible, but this one is looking better than most. In addition to that little lift, I also got news that one of my best friends who has been "expecting" for what I'm sure seems to her like forever had her baby this morning early. I know it's weird, but I think it's neat that her baby and I will have the same birthday. If she's lucky, the little one won't grow up to be anything like me. :)

Rat Rescue

Of all the things I didn't think I'd be doing tonight, rescuing mice is probably at the top of that list. Dillon and Pearl managed to corner one, but Dilly is still so young that she's not quite sure what to do with wiggly things. They chased it under the desk in my living room, and then Pearl grabbed it in her teeth and took off to the sun room growling like some sort of feral creature instead of the overfed lapcat she is.

I ran to the kitchen, got my heavy leather work gloves from my junk drawer, raced back, and grabbed up the mouse. Pearl, needless to say, was most displeased. There was blood on the mouse, but it was still kicking, so I hope she didn't mortally wound it. I took it outside and dropped it into some tall grass away from the house.

I have rat poison in my attic and under my house, so I guess this action was a bit paradoxical, but I just couldn't stand the thought of the cats torturing it to death. It probably ran right back under the house and proceded to chew up my phone lines again in vengence, and Pearl is currently in full savage-cat hunting stalk looking for another one, but at least I feel like I did the right thing.

Got One!

I finally got one! My eBay luck changed and I beat out the persistant bidder siempredolcevita who was buying up every chenille spread offered. This is my birthday present to myself. I love the color combination, and there is something oddly comforting about just lying on top of it. It's another thing somebody made with his (or more likely, her) own hands, and it's a piece of American history as well. I wonder how many people have spreads like this one shunned and tucked away in their closet tops. Maybe they aren't the current vogue, and I'm sure that the IKEA crowd would rather die than have one, but it suits my vintage life and tastes perfectly. I am looking forward to sweet dreams guarded by brilliant peacocks in the nights to come.

Bizarre-Land

Yesterday, there was a memo from October in my mailbox with passages highlighted that concerned regulations against teachers wearing jeans at school.

I was so hacked off. It must be admitted that I am occasionally guilty of wearing a really dark blue pair of jeans with my high school sweatshirt because I can't seem to find any navy pants when I need them. However, I also live, sweat, bleed, and die my job, so I don't think that one dark blue pair of jeans is a heinous sin.

I gave the sheet to my department head who took it to my principal, and guess what? It didn't come from the administration at all. Hmm..... curious....

Apparently, we have someone childish and silly on the hall. Joy-O. It's not enough that I deal with teenagers everyday; now one of my co-workers has devolved into one, too.

I have a pretty good idea who's responsible, and now I can just laugh at it. It's not going to affect me. I have too much to do to play juvenile games, but I have to say, it made yesterday really bizarre. As long as my administrators are happy with what I do, petty children in adult bodies can find anatomically improbable places to put such little missives.

And Then There Are Other Days

....the days I hate this job more than I can bear. Today is one of those days. My second period class apparently cheated on the makeup test I gave them, and I just want to put all my belongings in a box and go home permanently.

I hate dishonestly in general, but something about this just galls me. First, there's nothing that can be done. Since I personally didn't see it, there is no action I can take. Second, after confronting one of the alleged cheaters and having her lie right in my face, I am so physically sick that I need to go throw up.

I know I am not the arbiter of their morality, but I find it so offensive. Then adding the lie to it, I don't know how I'm going to be able to look at that class again. To know that they are cheating liars, to know that every single moment of every single class they lie and cheat, is almost too much for me to stand.

I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh well." I wish it didn't matter. It does, though, and today, I feel like the weather, gray, dull, cold, and lifeless.

I'm sick of this. There has to be something better, something worthy out there somewhere. I give too much, I put too much of myself into this teaching for things like this not to matter to me.

Maybe I'll go back overseas. I loved that. I was happy there. Maybe I could be again. Right now, I cannot believe that anything I do here matters anymore. That's not a feeling I can stand.