The Saga Continues... Dave Jones Is Here Forever, *************!
Bonus points to me for referencing the Wu Tang Clan's seminal debut album from 1993. There's a reason I'd describe my current mood as triumphant.
After a nice summer vacation/road trip with my wonderful girlfriend Catherine, we arrived back in Jackson to find our apartment broken into and our only worhtwhile possessions robbed blind. You can have my expensive TV, my one and only indulgence last year, crackheads, but if you could please return such obscure DVDs as Closely Watched Trains and Goodbye, Lenin it would be much appreciated.
Alas, about a week later I moved Catherine up to Evanston, IL, because she's beginning her graduate work at Northwestern. (Master's and Ph.D. program in film studies, if anybody's wondering, God help my own retreat back into the Ivory Tower...) So not only am I temporarily losing the love of my life with whom I've lived for a year, I had the privilege of driving a U-Haul up to and back from Chicago the weekend before the first day of school for our students in Jackson. Most teachers prepped for their second year. I moved a bunch of heavy shit and drove about 724 hours the day before school started.
Oh but wait, there's a phone call from Robbie who witnessed a car crash in front of my apartment while housesitting that weekend, and my car sustains about $1300 worth of damage while parked because of the skid after the impact. Great, I can deal with that too.
Now before all this, my life was a disaster. Then a bru-ha-ha, then a tragedy, but the moment I hit "fiasco" status was when I get literally steamrolled by a contruction truck who didn't see me before swerving into my lane on the highway. Luckily, I'm safe, but I've been driving a car with an engine and fluid tanks exposed to the open air for almost a week before I finally picked up a rental car today to have it fixed. The tab from this one, which thankfully will be entirely paid by their insurance policy, was $5800, bringing the grand total of damage of my car to $7100.
So here I am in the middle of my second week of school, having been violated and robbed, having lost my girlfriend for a year and my before-school prep time in the process, having had my car run over not once but twice, and having moved into a new apartment all within the space of a few short weeks.
Don't feel sorry for me though. For as much as I like to complain, I'm about as stoical as they come. Perhaps it stems from a general detachment from the passions, pleasures, and perils of life in general, but nonetheless, I trudge on. That's poor diction, however, because I don't feel like I'm trudging. Taking care of business and dominating the first few weeks of school simultaneously is more like it. The more adversity in my life, I suppose, the more I can rise to the occasion.
So how is actual school going? Really well, thank you. I'm comfortable in my teacher clothes even if I haven't figured it all out, I have a much better presence, attitude, and rapport with my students this year. I'm not having the classroom management issues I did last year, because sure enough, if you enforce the rules and set high expectations the students fall in line and appreciate it. I've lost one of my planning periods to tutor my star pupil in several years worth of Latin to prepare for the AP test she wishes to take despite the odds, effectively giving me a fourth prep and one less planning period, but that's more a blessing than a curse as far as I'm concerned. My oral communications classes are overcrowded and vaguely planned and state-guidelined, btu we'll end up doing some cool shit if I don't burn out. My Latin Is are much less academically prepared than last year's group, but they've got the same heart and drive and admiration for learning that I can mold into whatever I please without the hassle of having a billion Spanish overflow kids dumped on me. My Latin IIs are the cream of the crop of the cream of the crop from last year, and aside from a few classroom attitude/atmosphere issues with a few of them, I'd have to try really goddamn hard to screw it up. I'm sure I'll begin to wear out at some point, but while I miss Catherine a great deal and feel as though a piece of my heart is missing, I'll have that much more time and energy to devote to teaching this year.
So there it is. Rock onward.
After a nice summer vacation/road trip with my wonderful girlfriend Catherine, we arrived back in Jackson to find our apartment broken into and our only worhtwhile possessions robbed blind. You can have my expensive TV, my one and only indulgence last year, crackheads, but if you could please return such obscure DVDs as Closely Watched Trains and Goodbye, Lenin it would be much appreciated.
Alas, about a week later I moved Catherine up to Evanston, IL, because she's beginning her graduate work at Northwestern. (Master's and Ph.D. program in film studies, if anybody's wondering, God help my own retreat back into the Ivory Tower...) So not only am I temporarily losing the love of my life with whom I've lived for a year, I had the privilege of driving a U-Haul up to and back from Chicago the weekend before the first day of school for our students in Jackson. Most teachers prepped for their second year. I moved a bunch of heavy shit and drove about 724 hours the day before school started.
Oh but wait, there's a phone call from Robbie who witnessed a car crash in front of my apartment while housesitting that weekend, and my car sustains about $1300 worth of damage while parked because of the skid after the impact. Great, I can deal with that too.
Now before all this, my life was a disaster. Then a bru-ha-ha, then a tragedy, but the moment I hit "fiasco" status was when I get literally steamrolled by a contruction truck who didn't see me before swerving into my lane on the highway. Luckily, I'm safe, but I've been driving a car with an engine and fluid tanks exposed to the open air for almost a week before I finally picked up a rental car today to have it fixed. The tab from this one, which thankfully will be entirely paid by their insurance policy, was $5800, bringing the grand total of damage of my car to $7100.
So here I am in the middle of my second week of school, having been violated and robbed, having lost my girlfriend for a year and my before-school prep time in the process, having had my car run over not once but twice, and having moved into a new apartment all within the space of a few short weeks.
Don't feel sorry for me though. For as much as I like to complain, I'm about as stoical as they come. Perhaps it stems from a general detachment from the passions, pleasures, and perils of life in general, but nonetheless, I trudge on. That's poor diction, however, because I don't feel like I'm trudging. Taking care of business and dominating the first few weeks of school simultaneously is more like it. The more adversity in my life, I suppose, the more I can rise to the occasion.
So how is actual school going? Really well, thank you. I'm comfortable in my teacher clothes even if I haven't figured it all out, I have a much better presence, attitude, and rapport with my students this year. I'm not having the classroom management issues I did last year, because sure enough, if you enforce the rules and set high expectations the students fall in line and appreciate it. I've lost one of my planning periods to tutor my star pupil in several years worth of Latin to prepare for the AP test she wishes to take despite the odds, effectively giving me a fourth prep and one less planning period, but that's more a blessing than a curse as far as I'm concerned. My oral communications classes are overcrowded and vaguely planned and state-guidelined, btu we'll end up doing some cool shit if I don't burn out. My Latin Is are much less academically prepared than last year's group, but they've got the same heart and drive and admiration for learning that I can mold into whatever I please without the hassle of having a billion Spanish overflow kids dumped on me. My Latin IIs are the cream of the crop of the cream of the crop from last year, and aside from a few classroom attitude/atmosphere issues with a few of them, I'd have to try really goddamn hard to screw it up. I'm sure I'll begin to wear out at some point, but while I miss Catherine a great deal and feel as though a piece of my heart is missing, I'll have that much more time and energy to devote to teaching this year.
So there it is. Rock onward.
posted by David Jones | 20:29
1 Comments:
That's great about the student taking the AP test.
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