despues de la escuela

I just read my last blog post and laughed out loud at myself. It was like reading the words of someone describing having bamboo shoved under their pinky fingernail. That sucked, I hope it's over now. But just wait, friend, you have 9 more fingernails. And 8 of them are bigger than the pinky.

I get the same feeling when I look at my work ID card. The picture was taken the day before school started, when it was just the teachers in the building for orientation. My face is tanned and kind of plump looking, healthy... like the innocent, unsuspecting face of someone on You Can't Do That On Television... someone who is about to have a bucket of slime poured on their head.

Long story short, I had no idea what was about to happen to me. I read that post and thought, on any given day of this school year, a kid asking to take his shirt off would have been among the more "normal" things that happened that day. In fact, most days I'd be lucky if the kid, especially after gym class, even asked to take his shirt off (or walked in with it on in the first place.)

I have been screamed at, sworn at, berated, insulted and generally harassed by teenagers every single day this year. Some of the adults are not much better. I've been overwhelmed by traveling to different classrooms, unsure of my ability to do the job at all, and broken down in tears countless times, to other teachers and even in the classroom. My face looks gray and sunken compared to that ID photo. And somehow, on the last day of exams, when they all finally left and it was just the teachers again, I started to cry. You may be noticing a trend... It's true, all I did this year was f-ing cry. I'm not proud of myself.

I don't even know where I would begin writing about all the crazy stuff that has happened to me, and I'm sure it would be boring to anyone who isn't a high school teacher. (One thing I've learned is that school stories are interesting only to other "school people." I would like to thank all the non-school people who listened to my stories anyways and feigned varying degrees of interest.) So anyways, I'm not going to get into all that, I just want to say:

• I'm alive
• I'm glad it's over
• I'm really sorry I have been ignoring everyone's phone calls and emails for the past 10 months, and
  
• I'm now available to hang out, anywhere and any time (Sundays through Thursdays and weekends after work)! As the kids say, get at me.