hmph.

Teaching, I have found, carries with it an air of irritability like none I've ever seen. In this, I mean that sometimes it drives me fucking nuts.

I have trouble placing blame on students. This is good and this is bad. There should be a balance between what they do and what I do that leads to the chaos of class, but it all comes back to me. I absorb all of the little breaths of misdoings like air into a giant balloon. A student texts in class (puffs air into Ms. P) they didn't laugh at the funny joke I made (puffs air and spit into Ms. P) a handful of them were gone and all approach me seconds before the bell rings with questions that prevent me from starting class on time (puff, puff, puff, big inhale, puff) they take forever to calm down (puff) I told them nine times to raise their hands without talking (puff, puff, puff). But it turns out I'm a really flexible balloon. I don't burst, ever, but the air from all their stinky high school rectangle pizza breaths just eats at my rubber balloon skin. My balloon skin heaves as though it's breathing on its own. And it breathes and breathes and breathes and fills me with more pressure from the inside and then Mr. O says, are you going freak show today? And I don't even know what that means. I don't even know why I'm irrirtable anymore. But I tell him I'm fine and that's a big fucking lie and we all know it's a big fucking lie.

Is it because Dingleberry's still living at home, even though I called it--I fucking called it so bad--that he'd be living there past the 1 February deadline? And did I not--did I fucking not--call it that he would lose his job, get fired, and then my folks wouldn't be able to kick him out because he was unemployed and unable to support himself.

I'm so good sometimes it hurts. It really, really hurts.

So, I went home expecting him to be gone, but nobody told me he wasn't gone, and then I had to deal with his ugly mug all weekend. Plus, Travis has become the smelly kid whose grades are falling, quite reminiscent of fucking Dingleberry, and I can do nothing but (in this instance) but all of the blame on Dingleberry. Well, a little on the folks, too. The smelly kid. The smelly kid. Although, I do have to laugh at the side comment my dad yelled to him downstairs from upstairs: You gotta shower everyday, Travis, goddammit, when you're going through all those changes like that.

All those changes indeed.

Is it the jobs I'm going freak show over, is it the grad school homework, is it the students, is it every little lesson, is it the big lessons, is it the students, is it that I'm scared that I have to leave, is it that I want to run away, is it that I'm not cut out for this teaching thing like I thought I might be because the stuff that I'm good at doesn't matter as much as the stuff that makes me go freak show, is it because I don't feel like I've improved at all in the past, like three months, but instead fallen into a teacher pit that I can't crawl out of? I haven't gotten any better. I take classes, and I learn and learn, but instead of applying it, maybe I get a little more freaked out a little more stressed, a little more irritable. And the same things go wrong with every lesson and it's hard to write letters that say nice things about yourself when you hate yourself everyday even though you're doing what you love because you realize that you don't do it as good as you want to.

The last assignment was bad, I'm taking all the blame, puff puff. They pressure me into ending class three minutes early during 8th hour and I give in, puff puff.

Is it the weather, is it Elgin, is it Rochester, is it that I'm a selfish asshole, is it that I need lots of medicating drugs that make sleep come, is it that I'm not running enough, is it that I have 60 papers in my queue that I don't give two fucks about grading right now?

What is it. What makes me want to scream today.