Back to Work.

After a measly 6 weeks summer vacation (five days of which I spent doing work-related things) I'm back in the saddle tomorrow. I'm not recharged, I'm not refreshed, I'm not rejuvenated. In fact, I slept ten hours last night and took a two and a half hour nap earlier in the week. It is not go time. 

I know, I know, most people don't get summer breaks, and that's unfortunate and isn't relevant because this is my blog and I don't care about other people. So sad. I think the world would be a much happier place if we were allowed more time off (doesn't Europe get like five months off a year?). But, dealing with over 170 teenagers ever day for 9.5 months requires time off. There's no way around it. Being a teacher isn't necessarily hard, but between the pressure from various people and the amount of grading and planning it's exhausting (I must say, elementary was much, much less time-consuming for me). Not to mention the early wake up call- waking up before seven in horrible, but setting my alarm before six is downright brutal.

But, I'm trying to get pumped. I'm making my beginning of the year PowerPoints and syllabi and am excited that the courses I teach this year require some real literature. I'll teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and maybe Julius Caesar with my AP students, and then Antigone, Master Harold and the Boys, Catcher in the Rye, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Stranger and Chronicle of a Death Foretold with my IB Juniors. During a time where it seems the push is to lean heavily on expository text it makes me happy to get to focus on literature with my IB class (no so much AP, though). 

I'm also legitimately excited to see the students. I'm taking a lot of my old sophomores from AP Language last year to IB this year, and will also have a lot of returning kids in yearbook. My numbers are outrageously high (so high I'm not even going to say it publicly at this point, for fear of making everyone laugh so hard they piss themselves) and still need to be tweaked, but I'm sure it will be worked out soon (it has to; if not- well, let's leave it at that). 

I desperately need the routine work brings into my life. The last few weeks I find myself unmotivated to much of anything and being unproductive makes me feel worthless. There's only so much reading by the pool this girl can do. Wonderful things happen when I work- I actually schedule time in my weekend for cleaning the house, I burn more calories during the day on my feet, and I really truly value happy hours (I must add that I probably consume a lot more alcohol during the school year- causation for sure).  

Dammit. Here we go.

This is old (don't ask) but demonstrates my sediments exactly.