I have now finished my first week of teaching summer school, and by first week, I mean 4 DAYS. I have never been so exhaused on a Friday in my life. In my LIFE.
It's been years since I had a migrane, not since about 5th grade, but I had one yesterday. Circa 7:00 am, after running around since 5:40 trying to print my damn lesson plans on non-functional Fordham printers, I began to notice a pain behind my left eye. Said irritation increased all through class, up until it was time for me to teach at 10:40. By the time we ate lunch, I wanted to die. I hadn't eaten dinner the night before, because I'd slept through it (again), and even looking at lunch made me nauseous my head hurt so much. I barely made it through our whole-school meeting and the bus ride home, before collapsing fully-clothed on my plastic dorm bed at 4:40, and sleeping until 10:30 pm. My lovely roommate and fellow Miami corps members were sweet enough to bring me some snacks from the dining hall, but I was in no condition to eat them. I threw way the sadly melted ice-cream this morning with strawberry glops in it; that was about how my brain felt yesterday.
Teaching is hard, and Institute is harder. The only thing that I keep telling myself is that it will never be this bad again. I will never have my entire day made into a madatory schedule. I will never have to coordinate with 3 other people just to work out an hour long lesson plan. I will never have to deal with being trapped with no car and no transportation 2 miles from 1. a grocery store, 2. an office supply store, 3. FUNCTIONAL PRINTERS AND COPIERS. I will never have my computer network go down at random times the entire week.
The Teach for America administration and corporate-structured body is on the receiving end of much of my wrath as of late, and our Faculty Advisor gets a bit of that too. All I know is that I can't afford to be broken-down every Friday night, nor can I afford to not eat dinner because I'm too exhausted to pull myself out of bed.
When I'm not comatose, things are pretty okay. I went for a run in the Bronx or in the beautiful Botanical Gardens 5 days this past week, and when I wasn't freaking out about the work that was due the next day, I felt okay. This morning at breakfast, I took 1.5 hours to eat an english muffin, some canteloupe, 2 cups of tea and a piece of toast. The wonderful thing was that I actually got to *talk* to people in a social manner, instead of talking only with my collaborative about lesson planning, and why we're so fucking tired.
I've also got to find a less tiring way to spend Saturdays, because while exploring Manhattan's various shopping districts is fun, and increases my teaching wardrobe in a way that it desperately needs, my body can't take all the walking AND function in a meaningful way on Sunday to get work done. Mary and I were quite bitter at the end of the night when all of Manhattan was conspiring against us seeing Spiderman 2 or De-Lovely, which pissed the fuck out of me, because ALL I wanted to do this weekend was see a movie, and now it turns out that I was too tired yesterday, too disorganized today, and too busy tomorrow (i already know), but oh well. Institute will be over soon?
We did have a great Thai dinner in the Village, I DID finally get to talk to Dave (true, it was for 9 minutes and 41 seconds, and I won't talk to him again until next weekend), I heard from Kaitlyn, and it was a beautiful day outside. I guess that's got to keep me going through the next 5 days of teaching. Whew, let's *hope* tmie flies. Peace out, y'all, I've got to s-l-e-e-p.
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