Fourth Quarter - Five Years Later

Hard to believe it has been five years since I wrote anything for this blog.

It's harder to believe I gave up after one post.  I didn't give up, so much as I got busy with other things, forgot about it for awhile, and then forgot about it completely before I ever got back to writing another post.  Why?

Well, I was spending a lot of time drinking, or playing Dad, or whatever.  Sometimes I even meant well, meant to accomplish more, even sat down to do it, but found reading and thinking while drunk to be ineffective, if not totally useless.

I don't drink anymore, and I think the anti-depressants are slowly affecting my ability to think and walk around without urine in my underwear less and less.  That helps, especially in moments and in some of my bigger-picture thinking and planning - but I still feel pretty shitty and useless, especially as a teacher.

I want to quit.  I can't believe I am going to be another teacher that doesn't make it, who can't hack it. But I also can't believe I made it five years already.

Teaching sucks, not because it is hard, and not because it is thankless.  It sucks because you spend every minute not spent planning lessons that you hope kill it thinking about how no one is learning and your evaluator is probably about to walk in, and students would rather talk and continue to repeat what they think over and over rather than shut up long enough o listen and, maybe learn.

I know that if I could figure out a few things it would be a lot better, but I don't want to try anymore.  It's not in my grasp to change my personality and be one of those teachers who controls all the academic and behavioral minutiae, every element of the class, every assignment and assessment, every word and every thought. Every goddamn bowl movement.  (Sorry Marvin, you can't leave to go shit until you stop responding to your mom's texts and finish your test!)