10 Musings About Teaching

Usually when I write my blogs I feel like posting about the really amazing things in my life, or the terribly tragic things. Right now I have none of that. I'm numb since J broke my heart and the semester has been kicking my ass. Since I'm not feeling too much, I can't write as well as I'd like to. As it was when I was writing Uncharted I got through the parts about J and falling in love, but when I got to the parts about before we met, I felt stumped because they no longer felt so important. But I digress.
For those of you who don't know, I'm a math teacher. The story of how I got to this point is a little crazy, so I'll leave you with the short version:
When I was seventeen I applied to college as a biomolecular and chemical engineering major. I got in almost everywhere I applied with generous scholarships and I was ready to send in my acceptance paperwork when my uncle passed away in a car accident. His death made me reevaluate everything and I decided to go to NYU to study music education. My second semester in none of my music classes were available, so I focused on my education requirements. I took one psychology class and decided that was what I really wanted to study. So after three years I graduated with a psychology major and dual minor in education and child and adolescent mental health. All of my jobs in college had involved tutoring or working with kids, so I somehow stumbled into a job at a tutoring center as a math instructor. For a while I was also an in class tutor for math in an elementary school.
I was always told you had to be a special kind of crazy to be a teacher and I've realized that its completely true. Here's a short list of things being a teacher makes you think:

1. I can totally have kids and be a supermom. Handling three children who share your own DNA has to be easier than working with five kids on five different grade levels and topics who are absolutely nothing like you and think the words coming out of your mouth are a foreign language.
2. This is ninety percent of the reason that I drink. I don't know how anyone could do this job without wine. Or tequila.
3. No, my personal life is not an acceptable or appropriate topic of conversation for class, but we all know when I've gotten laid based on my mood. You don't need to ask to know that I'm single as fuck right now.
4. Is it summer yet? I know it just ended, but is it at least Christmas break?
5. No, stop it, don't touch that. Don't put your hands in your mouth and play with your gum. Stop chewing the erasers. Just STOP.
6. Do you think they know we keep a shot of whiskey in our desk drawers for days like this?
7. I don't care that you don't think you'll need math because you don't want to be a doctor or an engineer. You're going to need math in college. I promise.
8. Can you get your hands out of your pants, please? You're fourteen and really inappropriate and freaking me out.
9. You shouldn't repeat everything you hear mommy and daddy say. In fact, I don't think you shouldn't repeat ANY of it.
10. If I had majored in something else I could be making more money and working some place that didn't practically mandate taking two Vitamin C pills a day.