Prelude to the end.....

  The end for me looms in the distance, calling my name. On Monday, I spoke of exemptions, but today we started finals. Soon we will mark the end of another year, which I will do a little look back next week. Today, I spent telling kids whether they were on track to pass or not and gave two finals. We are gearing up for graduation, and for next year. They have already sent out the schedule for the next year's back to school activities. The fatigue radiates from everyone down the halls. Kids are tired, teachers are tired, and anticipation is so thick you can cut it with a knife. For me it has been hit or miss this week, as I suffered from a massive migraine on Tuesday, and a headache yesterday. This stress catches up to you in the most peculiar ways. One of the main goals of starting this blog was to show what it was like to be a teacher. This last bit of school is probably the hardest part. I first thought that it would be easy, that giving finals was the easiest part of the year. The reality is really much different. You are so tired by this point, and they give you too much time with classes, that by the end even the most seasoned and well respected teacher is showing movies. It is tough to deal with the smallest annoyances due to the fatigue, and you feel and the burden of grades that rests on your shoulders. This experience is unlike any time that I can recall in the corporate world. Mostly, the corporate environment is a repetitive place. Occasionally there is a deadline that you have to put some long hours into, but overall the day to day stuff is the same. That makes most jobs fairly manageable. It separates the teaching environment from the rest because at this end while there is an end in site, this deadline is the ultimate one. It has been a long ride, and while it is almost over for us the beginning of the next cycle is really not that far away.

Tomorrow I am going to look at a personality type that exists in all jobs, and why the teaching profession caters to the ladder climber.

Until Tomorrow,

Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.

John Mason Brown (1900–1969) American drama critic and author.