*Cough*

I'm calling in sick on Friday.

A mental health day is in order. I took a mid-year survey for the organization that placed me here. On it there were some questions along the lines of, "I know where I can go to get mental help if I need it," and, "I would seek mental help if I needed it." I checked disagree. Sure, at orientation they handed us a sheet listing psychologists, but none of them are really near us. I don't have the time to drive to find someone hours away.

After feeling personally attacked for the past week, my prescription for myself is to spend time with people who know me well and who will build me up. There are people here encouraging me, but we just lack the shared history for them to get me where I need to be.

as requested

One of you wanted pictures of my classroom. Actually, I think there have been multiple requests, but there was finally one that convinced me to take pictures. (That and I finally have enough decorations to not feel like a slacker.)
From the back looking forward. The construction paper on top is a number line that I have a student working on building. Just because the reference helps.


And from the front looking at the back. The computers look nicer in this picture than they actually are. Don't be fooled. My classroom, so low-tech it's depressing.

Still frozen...

The hot water's out. Again. They've had the heat machine going at it for two hours and it still hasn't broken. Sewer line's not fixed yet either. I'm going over to another teacher trailer for a shower.

The maintenance set-up has gotten progressively more elaborate over the past EIGHT days. These pictures are from last Thursday. Since then we have more of a road block. It's kind of impressive. Except I'm not sure that it's getting anything done.

Bah.



Hopefully the view from my window will soon be happier than this.

Follow up from the whine

I know it's not professional to have breakdowns at work. I tried to limit it today.

My department chair (that other teacher in my department) and my assistant principal are amazing.

Amen.

Still, no matter how much my mind knows that it's not me, no matter how ridiculous the points are to people who know me, no matter how many times I'm told not to take something personally, I can't convince my gut. (Mom's words there.) The take-away lesson: I could never be a politician. Negative campaign ads would make me doubt myself. And then I live down to expectations.

Sometimes the journey is the expierence

I'm not confident when I started watching the State of the Union address. Sometime in high school. I'm confident that I watched it every year in college, and have some pretty fond memories of those experiences. (How nerdy is that? Warning, half of you who read this are included in those memories.)

I don't remember being aware that the address was coming up, but last night I thought about it as I went to sleep, making a note that I needed to find out when it was (didn't think I'd missed it yet) and find a way to watch it. Woke up this morning to the announcement that it was tonight and then nearly forgot by the time it came on.

Thankfully, I was procrastinating by looking at the news and had 10 minutes to find places to watch it.

Tried CNN first, but the audio kept skipping out. So then I started steaming audio from NPR, but it was out of sync with my video. Switched to the video from the White House. It's more in sync with the audio (the audio with has too much background noise). The video's amusing though. Keeps malfunctioning somehow. See below for an example of what I mean. (Edit: blogger's having difficulty posting images, check back later.)

I'm distracted enough by the process of trying to get this together that I'm not really paying attention to the speech. I miss having running commentary with other people in the room. I'm home alone tonight, and not anticipating more phone calls, so it's not like I'll even discuss this tonight. And I don't know enough to feel like I could discuss if you called. (Though I'm paying more attention as I write this. And I'm being reminded of different friends I listen. To the friend who's vocal against wiretapping, I think you just lost any hope.....)

Hmmm...this is a great way to keep procrastinating, but I should grade tests. Bush should be nearly done......And then there's the response....

Edit: He finished one minute after I hit publish post.

Cheese please. (To go with my whine.)

There are times when I feel like the school's picking on me. Many times. Far too often. I want to say, "You're a jerk. And I'm not as bad as you make me out to be." But have to respond more diplomatically.
There's the feeling of, "If you don't like me this much, if I'm this evil or whatever, just go ahead and fire me. It'd be a relief for me not to have to worry about this more. Screw yourselves over--the other teacher in my department won't last long without me here. But stop messing with me."

I try to limit the feeling. But there are times. And today is one of those times.

I try to remember that it's the students who are the real victims in this mess.

Try to hold on the the belief that people take their insecurities out on me because my demographics (first year teacher from the outside) make me vulnerable.

Try not to pass my insecurities on to the students.

Try to persevere.

The trick is caught between the determination not to quit with the hope of enough of an excuse for an out.

Duly Inspired

I feel like I should have learned about TED before. Talks about Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Great stories, talks. Short and intense. I just watched my first video and think I may have found some sort of substitute for the talks I miss from college. (Because, let's face it, my current location had plenty of cultural experiences, but it's not the high culture and certainly not the intellectually challenging fun that I was devoted to in college.)

I totally subscribed to the podcast of this. (And yes, I know some of the talks from college are available online, but most of them are amazing because you're there and the way I shared them with the people around me. Think of lunch. Think of the notebook. You know what I mean. Not the same watching a video.)

I actually had heard of TED earlier this school year via one blog or another. But I just went to the website and was overwhelmed by the selection, couldn't really figure out what it was. If you need a place to start and you like inspirational stories, watch Bill Strickland's talk. It's the one I started with. (The only one I've finished watching so far....) It gives me hope about what school can be, even in situations like the one here. Inspiration indeed.

home alone?

I've enjoyed the company the past several weekends. Getting out skiing. Friends visiting. Visiting friends and the rest of Christmas break. Getting the break from school by being social is great. It helps me put aside the stress of being a teacher in this insane situation.

This weekend I have the trailer to myself. I went grocery shopping on Friday and have holed up since. Really didn't do much yesterday--read in bed, cooked, talked on the phone.

I know people have been moving to this area for ages. But I can't imagine coming here without modern communication technology. Forget the 1800's, I'm not sure how I would do moving here in the early 1990's. I guess I don't use my landline much, but my cell phone gets hours and hours of use. E-mail and blogs keep me sane.  This morning I used Skype for the first time to talk to a friend in Tokyo. We hadn't talked since graduation and it was amazing to catch up. So even though I've been by myself this weekend I feel like I've been super-social.

Today, I have to forget my lazy ways. Need to lesson plan for the coming week. Having the four preps is insane. It'll be interesting to see how I manage to keep up with the year. Balancing the keeping ahead with work and the keeping sane by taking breaks (both "by myself" and with people).

I really prefer living in a first world country

Setting: the FEMA trailer ~15 minutes ago, Self closes door and IMs the following to housemate (still working at school)

so the maintenance guys stopped by before they left

just now

saying to do whatever that needs water in the next hour

it'll spill out, but he expects it to freeze again tonight

tomorrow they're going to go digging

and then may end up replacing the line

and who knows what

which is all to say, i'm going to take a quick shower now.

and if you want one in our house you should come home soon to get it.

yay

end scene


In my shower, I realized how spoiled I am to take running water (and draining water) for granted. Necessity. Freak out when I don't have it.


That's great. Can we please have the water working for real tomorrow?

If the year is a marathon, why do I feel like I'm sprinting?

They added another subject to my class load starting last week. I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed by it all. So posts here not happening so much.

Back to lesson planning right now. Hopefully I'll update more sometime soon.

Distractions from the past are amazing

Today was a rough day with admin at at school. (Which I'm not going to explain now. Really I should be lesson planning.) But when I came home, one of my professors from last year had e-mailed me asking if this one talk being given is using the same data set as my senior thesis.

It is.

So now, I'm looking up more stuff that's come out recently using my dataset and really missing the thesis and kind of wishing I was going to grad school next year, even though I don't know where I should go nor exactly I want to study.

Missing that thesis needed to be shared with someone. I couldn't decide who, so now it's all of you faithful readers.

I fly back tomorrow, though won't go back to school until Monday. I'll be visiting college (again) in the meantime. I haven't gotten as much work done as I'd envisioned, but I think that's because I didn't account for travel in my vision. The reality is that half of my break is being used to travel.

New computer is fun. Shiny. Though again, getting adjusted to it is taking time. Figuring out what all programs I want on it. How they run. When I'll use what. Where all the old files are (because I'm hoping to use different accounts so I keep my different lives separate to some degree).

Apologies to everyone who I'm supposed to contact and haven't. No excuses per se, just the sense of fleeting time.