I never thought I'd actually say this, but I think I'm starting to loathe weekends! You might be thinking: "Wwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaat?" I've never experienced this phenomenon before either but I'm serious. Your next question is probably "Why?" so I'll tell you! My weekends suck! I'll use this past weekend as an example:
I'm contractually obligated to be at school until 3:17pm M-F. On Friday, my plan was to get out by 3:30 at the very latest. Ummmm... well, that turned out to be more like 4:30! Then I got home, ate dinner and spent the next 4 hours grading approximately 40 tests and began reviewing some student essays (I had 35 to read over the weekend). Saturday I was up by 5am, worked out for a couple of hours and then spent the next 12 hours lesson planning. After a quick dinner break, it was onto essay grading. After about 2 hours of essay reading/grading, I said "enough" and went to bed. Sunday, I was up by 6am, and after hitting the grocery store, it was back to reading and grading my students' essays. I did that until almost noon, when I had to leave to go to my 2nd job of tutoring a local student on his upcoming ACT. After I few hours of tutoring, I headed to the Newburyport library to find a few art books that I need for one of my classes this week. Finally, I returned home to finish the last few essays that needed grading, created a couple of quizzes and a PowerPoint presentation on Anne Bradsteet and all my work was finally finished (at 7pm). To sum up, I basically worked approximately 30 of 38 waking hours this weekend, so yeah, I think that deserves some repugnance!
The above account represents a typical weekend for me ever since starting my new career in August. Yes, I still love my job. Teaching is still the most amazing job (other than performing) that I've ever had, but I will say I can completely understand why new teacher's burn out quickly and contemplate the wisdom of their career choice. I have no life outside of work and grad school and that sucks! The only people that I socialize with are my local Starbucks baristas because if I don't get my weekend Starbucks fix, I will have to hurt someone. :-) I do wish that I had someone who could occasionally take me away from everything for a hour or so, but that is just a pipe dream!
In case you're curious, I did get through my worse week of the year (mostly unscathed), but this year was particularly horrendous on a personal and professional level. It was especially bad professionally, as all my students were particularly out of control this week. Some of the lowlights of the week were: a belligerent student walked out of my classroom (not an entirely unpleasant experience), none of my honor's students did their reading homework and left me with zero plans for that class, a male student cyberbullyed/sexually harassed two female students (the offender was suspended), the repeated use of a particularly offensive word which was banned from my classroom, a bevy of detentions handed out, an afternoon of "professional development" which was completely useless and an annoying waste of time, and a ridiculous evening conversation with the Executive Director of Teach for America in which I had to explain why I loathe TFA and had given them a 1 (out of 7) on the most recent survey. Oh, and don't forget last week was a short week because of the holiday on Monday. <sigh> I could go on and on about the things that went wrong this past week. I was so looking forward to the week ending, but only to have a weekend of a nearly insurmountable pile of work! I know this will get better (it has to), but I also know it's not going to get better for a very long time. Okay, I'm done venting. Tiime for some Downton Abbey! Thank goodness I can get lost in that lovely world for the next hour.
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