Come Down Off the Cross, We Could Use the Wood

So, my final required post of the summer.  This is a free write, so you might think that would promise a good post, but I'll be honest: I dont' have it in me today.  I'm driving up to Memphis in a couple hours to pick up Sarah, which is exciting, I'm beginning real school in a week, which is frightening, I finished doing my classroom management presentation effectively concluding the program for the summer, which is relieving, but all of these things combine to make me dead inside, trudging towards an approximation of the necessary length of a blog post.  All of these words, one after the other, in succession, combining to form some kind of mean, serve only to extend a post that deserves to die now.

With that behind us, I have elected to write about the attitude I am gong to force myself to maintain as events intensify, loyalties waver, and long-held beliefs are cast aside.  More than anything else, I'm going to eschew martyrdom.  I tire of the negativity that accompanies teaching, even if most of it is justified by the sad state of certain districts.  I said this at the beginning and I still hold to it, now that I'm a real teacher or at least somebody with a teaching license, but this is not a sacrifice, this is a job and, in the grand scheme of things, a very good job.  I will not be paid more than 34,000 dollars a year, but neither are 99 percent of people in the world and most people in the country (or at least most people my age).   I will be disrespected routinely, will likely have to follow procedures that do not seem to make sense, and may be underneath people who do not seem to deserve their position, just like almost everyone at almost every single job in the country.  I will not be undergoing unbearable physical stress.  I am in no way entitled to anything that pays better or has more prestige or power.  I will have plenty of time off.  I will be working a white-collar job, one that would be considered a great success for almost all of the students that I will be teaching. I will be getting a free education and certificate.  I will have the support of an organization and a group of peers.  I will be receiving loan reimbursement.  I will continue to type away on this free laptop.  So, please, if you hear me complaining about how my life is hard, tell me to shut up.  Likewise, if you notice me becoming self-congratulatory on my selflessness, chastise me as well for that.  I don't' know what the hell I'd be doing if I wasn't here.  I was told today that a lot of us might be giving up six-figure incomes to come here.  I am not in that category.  I am much closer to giving up 6 dollars an hour to come here.  All that said, I acknowledge that it is going to be difficult and I empathize with some of the struggles that people have had, but I would rather be having a headache every day teaching than go back to some of the jobs I was working at before I came here.  I am going to do everything I can to dedicate that energy that I might spend complaining to being optimistic, efficient, and achieving some degree of success and happiness.  That is all for now because the social is in a matter of minutes, but I will write more later, possibily with a more liberal use of paragraphs.