captain crabby.

I'm in a shit mood today. Students, at the end of the (tri) semester drive me crazy, handing in crap last minute even though I told them they couldn't, not concentrating on anything we do.

And today my favorite student called me "loose." It wasn't in a slutty way; he's too naive and young to realize what he meant by the comment. It was in the way that he said, after you're not a first-year teacher anymore, are you still going to be loose? And then he told me the story about the guy at the middle school who was way awesome his first year but then cracked the whip his second year.

He was trying to say I was nice and a cool teacher but the comment really bothered me. I know that classroom management is far from my strongest teaching point, but because of my mood today, it just turned into a dig at how lazy I am at keeping students on track. It just screamed in flashing lights at me: STUDENTS DON'T RESPECT YOU! STUDENTS DON'T RESPECT YOU! STUDENTS THINK YOU'RE COOL AND THAT'S A BAD THING BECAUSE IT MEANS YOU'RE TOO EASY!

Sucks.

I'm also frustrated with myself this week, how I'm not really teaching but sitting at my desk and having to do so much fucking work that I do sort of let the students do whatever. I gave them assignment for the entire hour, and half of them stopped doing it with about 30 minutes left. And I didn't play damage control. It was bad teaching. It shows that I deserved that comment up there. But sometimes it's hard to get motivated, hard to nag. Sometimes I just want to shove tootsie rolls in my mouth instead, email Jenny and Christina, and wait for the day to be over.

Next Monday, it starts over again. Next Monday is like the first day of school again. I'm frustrated with these trimesters, frustrated with Hutchinson, frustrated that even though I'm lucky enough to teach the exact same classes again--giving myself a much easier schedule--that it feels like I'm moving backwards. And backwards is the last, last, last feeling that I need to have right now. How can it feel like Christmas is coming when September 7th is waiting in the wings? It's exactly three months later than that first day, and I have to start all over. Meh.

But. This weekend I look forward to sitting down and writing, sitting in my apartment and organizing pictures and finally hanging things on the wall. I look forward to getting my place ready for the Jenny visit. I look forward to not doing school things. I look forward to fake-designing an album for a mock band, for writing bad poems, for doing other useless shit that makes me incredibly happy. I look forward to wrapping presents. Bing Crosby's Christmas album.