snow 2 (life/teaching/school)

In all three major areas of my life (me as a teacher, me as a student, and me as me), I feel that crankiness is the major tone. People around me are cranky about their classes, their students, and their papers. I am cranky about my classes, my students, and my papers. Typically, I feel my crankiness has subtle differences from their crankiness. But, today, I realized that is just not true. Sure, I am tired because I have survived 12 weeks of university (with approximately 89 mini-assignments) in combination with 51 days of teaching 5, 6, and 7 year-olds. And, yes, I do have more than one student who thinks that our classroom is a personal obstacle course and a few others that are still acquiring some basic interpersonal skills (i.e. not shaking others, not spitting on others, how to say nice things instead of curses, and how to respect the bathroom we all share by not peeing on the toilet paper). But, really, it could be a lot worse.

I was just IMing a friend and blamed the general malaise of all around me on the change in pressure and/or the negative ions in the air. Really, I think that we, as a collective, might just need to get over ourselves. Since I am not really in charge of anyone else, I'm going to have to just do it myself. I need to stop being overwhelmed and realize that I have it pretty good. I may be sleep-deprived and have had a dramatic reduction on my free time since August. But, the end is near. I'm on my way down to Washington, DC to see a ton of old friends this weekend. I don't know the actual directions to the new house I will be staying at tomorrow. But, I will get there at some point tomorrow night and things will be good. That's just the way things are sometimes.