Tomorrow is my first day of teaching.
[holy crap]
It has been a whirlwind of a week. Last Friday was my last day of student teaching. This was the phase of "getting a real teaching job in the future is a far-off and distant thing...and it seems so nice in theory." Saturday, I moved out of Eau Claire and back into my parent's place. (I'm working on that one...but the free food, laundry service, and friendly company - i.e., my dog Harley - are enough to keep a girl happy for a time). On Monday, I got the call that I got the job. Tuesday, started coughing, slept all day = bronchitis. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are a blur of too many trips to Office Max, Target, and Walmart and shoving around chairs in my classroom.
On Friday I had a breakdown. I couldn't breathe through my nose, icky stuff was coming out of my lungs, I missed my friends, I didn't have a thing planned for Monday let alone the entire semester, and the reality of a full-time job finally hit me. At the prodding of Lance, I gave up on life and went to bed at 7pm. 13 hours of sleep did me some good.
If you want to know what I'm really thinking, I'm wondering if my students will know that I'm barely a step ahead of them in the class. I'm wondering if I have what it takes to be a teacher, and I keep asking God that question. I also keep asking God if He thinks I can actually do this. Here's the thing: it's not pretend anymore. I'm in my own classroom (all by myself) and it's up to me to teach those kids how to write a thesis, or what a dangling modifier is, or how to channel their lost child into the best damn haiku they've ever attempted to write. I've been entrusted by those who hired me to do a good job and to earn the paycheck I'll get.
I reached a point today where I thought that a bare-bones sketch of the week was good enough, and I resigned myself to not being able to plan out the entire semester in one day. I just took a swig of NyQuil in the hopes of helping my lungs out a little. I will just have to get up tomorrow morning and plunge right in.
Jumping from theory into practice is a whole new animal.
