Stress Hangover / I want my life back.

The class I just taught was a disaster. I'm sitting here at my desk, counting the minutes until I can leave for the day and escape to the sweet oblivion of my bed. 39 minutes until crisp sheets, PJ pants, lemon seltzer and Ice-T's sarcastic quips about the latest murder-rapist to terrorize the streets of New York City. 38 minutes until fuzzy socks, cool air, the evening stretched lazily in front of me in that special way that only Thursday evenings before Friday holidays can (Sidenote: Thursday evening is more glorious when there's no work Friday. Fact). 38 minutes until I start my usual weekend dance of trying to shove the stress of the work week out of my head for long enough to enjoy the 2 days off. 37 minutes until I can shut my eyes and try to sleep and probably fail because there's too much in my mind but somehow trying unsuccessfully to sleep beats purposely being awake.

When I started student teaching and grad school, my mom stopped incessantly yelling about my terrible sleep schedule. At first I didn't know how to respond. No one yelled at me to get up at a reasonable hour on Saturday. No one cared if I slept until 4, which I routinely did. No one screamed at me when I was going to be late for teaching. Instead, I woke up to hot coffee being poured into my mouth and a warm "Morning honey!" When I finally confronted her, she said, "Honey, you're working extremely hard. I can't imagine taking on that courseload while teaching all day. If you need to sleep 20 hours a night, by all means do it. In high school, you were just lazy. Now, you deserve those 20 hours." 

I took this to heart and I'm glad I did. It's so easy to feel guilty for the time it takes to recover from teaching, especially in a tough school system with many troubled students. Even the greatest teachers -- you know, the annoying ones who seem to have perfect systems in place for discipline and instruction that promote student accountability, consistency, inquiry, and growth -- come home and sit on the couch for awhile to decompress. Trust me. I've asked them. I'm not saying I'm thrilled about it. I would love to be able to leave work and DO things for the several hours until I go to sleep. I would love to teach summer school if I weren't so destroyed from the school year. I would love to have real hobbies that require regular time commitments and friends I see more than once every other month when I don't bail because I'm too tired or upset. I would love it. But I've come to terms with it. I no longer apologize for my SVU binges, or clicking DECLINE on 99% of the weeknight facebook event invitations that come my way. I'm not happy about it, but I spend enough time feeling guilty about the fact that I could have done this or that better at my job. I'm not going to feel guilty for how I recover from that job. 

But this year has not been typical. Nothing about it has made sense. And somewhere in the last few months I began to wonder if things are getting worse. Somewhere in the last few months I began to think maybe I should replace "well-adjusted" with "in denial" when describing how I deal with all this stress. 

Did I always take things so personally? Did I always get this destroyed? It's hard to remember. This year has been terrible, worse than other years by far, but my reactions have been astronomically more severe. My first year was pretty bad. I taught 7 different classes at one point (non-teachers: I mean I had to prepare 7 different lessons each day). My second year (or was it the third?) I had those 8th graders in the morning that gave me HELL, and then there was the year I had to plan different lessons for each 7th grade class because they were each dysfunctional in completely different ways. Last year was awful, the worst I thought I'd ever deal with, until this year happened. I was upset frequently. I slept a lot. But I wasn't this unhappy this often for this long. Lately it seems like every little thing sets me off, and the panic and anger and pain that set in last for longer.

I used to go weeks without going out on the weekends. I used to sleep 20 hours a day. But somehow I remember it being a choice I made, which implies that I could have made a different one. Last weekend, for the first time in 2 months, I went out on Saturday night. I karaoked with my friends and for awhile, it was actually fun. I didn't drink, because I can't control my emotions sober let alone drunk, but I love being with my friends so I still enjoyed myself. Sort of. Mostly. For awhile. I thought if I looked the part, dressed the part and acted the part, it would be enough. As it turns out, pretending to be okay isn't the same thing as being okay, so I ran out of Hong Kong in Faneuil Hall crying.

There you have it. There's no set of circumstances that could allow me to go out and for ONE NIGHT not fall apart. I can't be normal. It's not an option for me anymore. I'm at home alone every weekend night watching TV and reading because I HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE, unless I want to make crying while sober in crowded bars a habit. 

Remember when you realized you couldn't drink like you used to? It happens to all of us at different times. I was about 25. Losing 30 pounds and being 3 years out of college combined was what did it for me. Suddenly, I could count the times I HADN'T gotten wasted, instead of the times I had. Suddenly, I was hungover until 7 o'clock at night. I started losing Saturdays and Sundays. Eventually I realized why: My tolerance had gone down. My body chemistry had changed. My outlook was the only thing that hadn't shifted. 

That's how work feels. The stress from one tough class leaks into another. The stress from one terrible day is still there the next morning. I run and sleep and box and watch SVU and I still can't get away from it. The stress is like a hangover that never ends. You can reevaluate the way your body handles alcohol, and change your habits accordingly. You can drink more water, drink less beer, get more sleep, and be hungover less frequently. But what can you do if your job is what's making you sick? What do you do if your life is one neverending migraine headache,  your mornings are spent bent over the toilet, you've been sick with one thing or another since October, and your doctors tell you the stress is causing your body's systems to malfunction? What do you do when you panic the second things seem calm because it's so unfamiliar that you're unprepared? What do you do when your body rejects the place you have chosen to do the job you love more than anyone has any right to love a given job? What do you tell the ER doctors when you're throwing up blood for no reason? What do you do when what's wrong with you doesn't show up on blood tests, and there's no medicine to make you better?


I don't want this anymore. 

MCAS is a sinking ship of fail.

I hate MCAS. 

We know this. It’s not a secret. I complain quite frequently about it. MCAS is a soul-sucking, creativity-killing, beaurocracy-driven, logistically despicable waste of valuable learning time. I understand why tests need to happen. I don’t understand why we can’t figure out a faster way to revise the testing process to make it more accurate and meaningful. 

Thirteen years ago, the sophomores sat down to take 10^th grade MCAS for the first time (officially, anyway, because previous years served as guinea pigs). Thirteen years later, we finally have a new set of learning standards, but we’re scrambling to create a better test to assess these new standards. Thirteen years of stupidly-worded questions, boring, repetitive analysis, and hours of missed learning time later, we’re TRYING to make a new test.

THIRTEEN YEARS. Why can’t it happen faster? What’s with the slow turnaround? While we were wasting time on a dumb test that doesn’t measure anything worth knowing, THIRTEEN YEARS worth of kids grew up and graduated or didn’t but it doesn’t really matter because we can’t help them now. Thirteen years worth of students think open response is a genre and multiple choice is a way of life. Thirteen years worth of students missed God knows how many hours of learning time that was spent prepping for or taking a dumb test. 

What took so damn long? When a ship is sinking, you jump ship and try to swim to shore. You escape in a lifeboat. You shoot off flares. You do anything, really, as long as you’re doing SOMETHING. You don’t stay on the sinking ship until it hits the ocean floor, just to make sure it’s really sinking, just to make sure there’s no hope. 

So here’s a radical idea: What do you say we try not to drown from now on? 

This depicts my feelings towards MCAS.

READ THIS BEFORE DATING ME

I realize I may not have been entirely fair. Communication is the foundation of any good relationship, romantic or otherwise, so in honor of that, I'm taking this moment to communicate the one universal truth you need to know before you date me:

DON'T tell me my job is easy.

I get it, really, I do. People that aren't teachers don't understand what it's like. In fact, I'm pretty sure many people that are teachers don't understand what it's like teaching at an inner city middle school. I'm not here to preach. I already talk way too much about my job, as do all my teacher friends, and it's something I'm working on. I will not deliver an impassioned speech. There will be no lectures, soliloquies, or angry rambling rants. Let's leave that to the experts (like Samuel L. Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction). I have nothing to prove to you. I love my job so much it continues to shock me when I think about it. I am thrilled with what I do. I'm also good at it. I don't expect everyone to understand. That's fine. All I ask is this: Don't be an asshole about it.

I'm sorry. I shouldn't say "asshole." I'm always cautioning my students against using profanity because it's vague, ineffective description, so allow me to elaborate.

Don't be an ignorant, condescending twit about it.

I will be the first one to admit when I know nothing about your job. I will ask you tons of questions, both to understand the bigger picture and what the minute-by-minute day-by-day is like. I will never make any assumptions. I will ask you first.

Just so you know, this was sparked by a recent event in my life. It occurred on a date, which is revolutionary in itself because guess what? I'm dating! I know, it's exciting. After a long (3-year) hiatus, I have decided it's time.

Scene: First Date. Restaurant in Boston area. 


Guy: So what do you do? 
Leah: I'm a middle school writing teacher. 
Guy: Oh my God, that must be the easiest job ever! You're done by 3, and you get summers off. 
Leah: Well, it's actu---
Guy: I WISH MY JOB WAS EASY LIKE TEACHING! 
Leah: Well, actu--- 
Guy: YOU'RE SO LUCKY. 
Leah: Could you lis--
Guy: I mean, whoa. 
Leah: I'm going to go wash my hands before our food comes. 
*Walks out the front door of the restaurant*

Clearly, the ETB (easy-teaching-bomb) was not the only issue with this man's personality. I'm still working on my screening process.

The message I want the world to take away from this blog (because let's be honest-- the entire world does, in fact, read this blog) is this: I have no desire to start bitching about how difficult my job is. I'm over that. If you get to know me, you'll see how hard my job is without me saying a damn thing. Just don't call my job easy. A teacher once said to me "If you know what you don't know, then you know something. If you don't know what you don't know, then you don't know a thing."

Eligible bachelors of the world, I implore you: Know what you don't know.

PS: If you're still having trouble understanding, please watch this slam poetry performance.

Multigenre Project Reflections: as of Monday 5/23/11

Overall goals: All year, students choose what they write, but I choose the genres. This time around, they choose both. They choose a topic, and they choose multiple genres in which to explore that topic.

First of all, I wish I’d started with the movie. I also wish I’d given them more choice in what genres to write in all year. I do believe in mainly genre-based units, but I could have embedded more genre freedom into some assignments, especially my less structured “Polish a Piece” assignments.

I also think I’m going to make a movie documenting my students’ journeys making these projects. That way, I can show next year’s students, and it will be that much closer to them.

One thing I’m noticing is that they are increasingly more confident in being confused and overwhelmed. While feeling in over your head isn’t the goal, it is a valuable part of the writing process, especially the way we teach it, as writing to discover. In the beginning of the year they panicked. It was clear they were used to being told what to do. Now, many of them have the attitude of, “I have no idea where I’m going with this, but I’ll explore and figure it out.” Yes. Go writer’s workshop model!

Obviously, it will be easier next year when I have more student exemplars to work off of. Although interestingly enough, less than a week into the unit, one student in each class has a full draft project done. They took me by surprise today. It was the classic situation. I saw a student talking instead of writing, so I walked over and asked, “What have you been working on, dear student?” Each student produced a thick packet of work. It’s not necessarily the students you’d expect, either. Well, one is. J

I also did some research about multigenre topics, because despite our students being very familiar with the “Explore, explore, explore, eventually decide what to develop into a draft” process, we don’t have enough time to do it fully. We have maybe 4 weeks, minus a couple of days. So in my googling, I came across a 7^th grade unit where the students all did multigenre autobiographies. I then changed the requirements of the project. Students have three choices: Multigenre Autobiography, Multigenre Project on 7^th Grade (or 8^th Grade), or more specific Multigenre project. I told them the truth, which is that I’m going to just write, and if I realize I’m writing a lot about my brother, then I’ll take the project in that direction. As they write, many of them are narrowing their focuses. I think giving the option of a broad autobiography takes the pressure off so they’re free to explore.

This teacher in the unit I found required students to choose 10 genres, which I think is overkill. It’s not that students aren’t capable of it. Rather, I don’t want to set unnecessary restrictions on them. This whole year I’ve never once told them how long something should be. I’ve just said, “this is what you need to focus on, make it as long as it needs to be. Make it wonderful.” Plus, I’m still figuring out my official requirements, but I’m keeping them simple. It will be something along the lines of, “Mark two places where you write about your topic in depth. Mark two places where you show your emotions.” Etc.

The topics are fantastic. I’m so excited.

Updates to come!

REGULATOR: Not So Much

Here's the issue. I have trouble with self-regulation. I tend to either avoid completely, or dive in for extended periods of time. It doesn't matter what, specifically, I'm doing -- generally, this still applies.

This applies to:

• things I love doing, 
• things I hate doing, 
• things I don't enjoy doing until I've been at it for an hour, 
• and things I don't enjoy doing but enjoy having done.

My psychiatrist has been telling me this for a while. Literally for as long as I can remember, I'm talking 14 years of "MODERATION, LEAH!" and then super-important psychological sounding things to back it up. It took me a while, but eventually I began to understand what he meant. It took me even longer to admit how detrimental this lack of self-regulation often was. And, remaining true to form, I didn't grasp how many areas of my life were affected by this until I stopped my 26-year avoidance of the issue and sat down (twenty minutes ago) to spend an extended amount of time contemplating all areas of it. 

At least I'm consistent.

Here's what a lack of self-regulation looks like, at least when it comes to me:

ONE
I have difficulty running under 5 miles. Sometimes, I even have difficulty running 5 miles, and I have to bump it up to 7 or more. I love running so much, and I love pushing my body as far as it can go. I love the numb feeling you get when your joints feel like jello and it hurts to change position in any way.

Sidenote: I wasn't always like this. I was never very fast, but I could build endurance, and I had a high pain tolerance. I also realized that, proportionally-speaking, I get faster the longer I run. My two-mile pace is similar to my 4 mile pace. With that said, I used to love our "forrest" 2-milers in high school. I used to love when practice got cancelled due to rain.

Sidenote that corresponds to previous sidenote: Though I wasn't as bad in high school, my lack of self-regulation showed itself in between seasons. I was either all-in, 5-6 days a week of practice, or lazy McNeverRuns, until the next season started.

TWO
I have difficulty transitioning out of a diet. I get the sense that for many people, losing weight is the problem, but once they lose it, they can pretty much keep it off. I am the opposite. Give me an absurdly restricted diet, and I can stick to it for months. I had no problem with Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, GetInShape, or Weight Watchers. The problem arose when I lost the weight and went into the "Maintenance" part of these programs. I don't know how to eat just one french fry. I find it impossible to measure out half a cup of ice cream and eat only that. When I measure out peanut butter, I lie to myself. Not in that "Oh, well, it's okay if it's a tad more," kind of lying that you're conscious of, I 100% convince myself that I am measuring truthfully, healthily and accurately. Then my pants don't fit. The same thing happens with drinking. I can quit drinking entirely, never taking a sip, for months. I do this fairly frequently, in fact. However, when I do drink, I get drunk. I don't mean to. It just happens. I can't just have two beers, feel happy tipsy, then go home and go to bed. Just like I can't eat two french fries and stop there.

THREE
I have a stressful relationship with television shows. I can't watch just one CSI: Miami. I have to watch five. Or, I have to watch two every night for four days. The alternative, is that I don't watch it at all. That's the stage I'm currently in with CSI: Miami. However, I'm currently in obsessive mode with about 12 shows.

Plus, now that I don't have cable, it's actually worse. I don't think I realized how bad it was until I started watching Lost in Thanksgiving of 2009. The sixth season premiered a few months after I started watching it from the beginning, and I was caught up, WITH TIME TO SPARE. One weekend I had the flu and I literally watched Lost for 9 hours. 9 HOURS. Who does that? I don't care how sick you are, there's no excuse unless you're a 100% ridiculous human being. Which I am.

Another thing that happens is that once I catch up, I get so impatient waiting for one hour of each show per week that I abandon shows until I have at least 3 or 4 episodes to watch in a row. Occasionally, this results in high numbers of unwatched episodes, which stresses me out further. For instance, I am probably 31 episodes behind in Gossip Girl, which I love. I keep meaning to catch up, but it's a daunting task, and even though I prefer to watch TV in large quantities, even I get overwhelmed sometimes. And I worry. What if I'm too far gone when I start watching it again? What if I forgot what happened, and have to start even further back? What if I think I remember what happened, and then it turns out I forgot a tiny piece of something funny Chuck said and I miss some super-witty-wonderful or super-awful-hideous connection? What if, when I start watching again, I am unable to suspend my disbelief that a group of 6 people can have sex with every person in that group in every combination possible, being in love at least 50% of the time? Wait... who am I kidding? That will never be a problem. I'll always buy into that.

FOUR
I'm getting better about this, but cleaning has always been an issue. My mother can attest to this: As early as age 12, I fell into the trap of spending 11 hours cleaning my room every three months rather than spending the corresponding number of minutes each day. This only got worse in college, with more stuff and less space. It was further complicated by the fact that, in my first post-college apartment, my roommates moved in "college-style" (leaving 70% of their belongings at their parents' homes) while my mother was forcibly emptying out my childhood bedroom and sending it with me in minivanloads. I also have this terrible habit of putting things in "random buckets" (which may be bags, bins, unused space behind the printer, or other illogical locations that seem perfectly sensical at the time (Stephanie: I found the duck tea thing. Inquire within): My underwear drawer is important. I'll definitely remember that I put my camera / nail polish / copy of Atlas Shrugged / car keys / latex gloves / tiny lightbulbs from Ikea that fit only the lamp I bought from Ikea / slinky / hairbrush 1, 2 and 3 in here). Then, I make this grand plan to empty out the random buckets either in one fell swoop (all or nothing mentality) or bit by bit. Neither works. I'm getting better, and I have improved so much, but that's not exactly saying much, if you know what I mean. I should set the bar a little higher. Like, only underwear goes in the underwear drawer.

Sidenote: Out of curiosity, I'm going to go check what's in my unerwear drawer now. My apt is mostly clean. This should be fun. It will prove that, no matter how on top of it I may appear to be, it is an illusion. Oh sweet God. Okay, here goes: What I found in my underwear drawer, despite the fact that my room is mostly clean:

forever 21 bag, cheap star of david bracelet I bought in Jerusalem, one of those bags you put bras in in the laundry, green bandana, picture of Robert Pattinson (a gift from a student), a Lexington Track & Field sportsbra that we ordered my freshman year of outdoor track, Spring 2000 (it hasn't fit in at least 2 cup sizes), a dust cloth (clean), 2 price tags, 7 bottles of chrome nail polish (remember that?) a murder mystery I got for free, and strange shiny pants that were reportedly Israeli.

Now I'm going to go put all that back in my underwear drawer. Well, maybe I'll put it in the Forever 21 bag, and then put it back in my underwear drawer. Or, I could put it in one of the three "random buckets" at the end of my bed.

Notice nowhere in there did I consider putting each individual item where it needs to go.

FIVE
Hobbies are an issue. I have over 20 skeins of yarn and dozens of knitting needles, but I knit every two months for several consecutive hours during a marathon CSI: Miami catch up session. Then, I store them and they collect dust.

Reading is probably the least problematic, because the most amount of good comes out of it. I love getting lost in a good story, and very often it helps me do one of the other 3.4 million things I have to do, because I can use it in a lesson plan, or discuss it with a student. At the very least, I use it as an escape from thinking about all the 3.4 million things on my to-do list (Yes, I do realize that I watch CSI: Miami for the same reason). But it has its downsides. For 2 weekends this winter, I didn't leave the house at night because I was reading all ten Sookie Stackhouse books in a row. I accidentally bailed on 3 New Year's Eve parties because I was so immersed in the books. I say accidentally because I finished book 4, looked at the clock, discovered it said 1:14 a.m., and said, "Oops." Then, I continued reading, not calling back any of the 14 people who had called wondering where I was.

Boxing works well because I don't have a heavy bag at home, so I really can only box twice a week when the class happens at my gym. Though I'm considering buying a bag. Hmm. Now that I'm writing this post, I'm wondering if that's a good idea. What if I box my damn hands off, due to my inability to regulate the amount of time I spend on the bag? Honestly though, that's not what I'm worried about. Boxing, running, all the physical hobbies have a built-in regulation mechanism: eventually, your body breaks down. Which is not to say that I learn how to regulate myself based on the negative reinforcement of bloody knuckles / blistered feet / inability to walk up stairs for 2 weeks. But at least it forces me to stop.

SIX
When I decided to write about my lack of self-regulation, the only area of that idea that I was really interested in was how it pertained to lesson planning and grading. Tonight, I graded and planned for 6 hours straight after doing very little all of spring break, and I started thinking, do I really plan better this way, or is this just the only way I know how?

YET LOOK AT THIS LONG-ASS BLOG.

I couldn't just write about the one piece I wanted to, I had to explore how this idea affected every area of my life. Well, no, not every area. There are some I left out. But I'm trying to regulate that right now by not going into the more minor rgulatory issues like buying 7 pairs of earrings, or 18 cans of tomato paste when it's on sale, even if I don't know what the hell I'd even make with it. See? I'm trying. But it's taking real, honest-to-God effort to not press the up arrow and elaborate on the earring thing, or turn the tomato paste thing into an entire subsection involving grocery shopping and shopping in general, because really, I could. I won't. Probably. Most likely. I'm sitting here, repeating "It's almost 4 a.m." in my head. Okay, I think I conquered that urge.

SEVEN
This brings me to the real reason I decided to write about this (aside from the fact that I find it very difficult to focus on a mere part of an idea if I can focus on the entire idea, the history of the idea, everything even distantly related to the idea, and random associations I have pertaining to said idea).

I always start vacations with these grand plans for productivity in mind. I'm going to plan for 3 hours each day! I tell myself. I'm going to plan ahead, so I can have a life for the next month or so! I'll actually be able to make photocopies in enough time, and I won't be on the phone with the copy center in a panic at 7 a.m., and I'll teach better, because I'll have thought it through more effectively, and I'll have more time to spend grading and giving thoughtful feedback, and I can communicate more regularly with parents, and I can even make time to call them with good news, not just "your child's cussing me out again" news, and... the list goes on.

Yet inevitably, I'm so residually exhausted from the 12-hour days I regularly pull that I need the vacation to do... nothing. I need to sit around and do... nothing. Except watch CSI: Miami.

Some of this is necessary, and has nothing to do with my lack of self-regulation. Inner-city middle school students are like very clumsy dinosaurs that stomp all over good faith effort and optimism, and leave panic, chaos, and exhaustion in their wake. They're stress tornadoes, and I know this. Even if I were a vampire (Twilight mythos) who didn't need to sleep / had more time on my hands, my students  would still do this. Even if my units were all dynamite fantastic, their rein of chaos would prevail. I love my job, I do, and part of that love is accepting that a certain amount (read: 300 tons) of stress comes with the territory.

However, some of it I bring on myself. Here's what happens: I'm so stressed that I do no work at home on Monday and Tuesday night, so I end up doing 6 hours on Wednesday and Thursday night. After teaching an 8-hour day. Then, I'm exhausted, so I'm useless on vacation. Come summer, I'm so panicked about the sheer volume of work I have to do that I become unable to break it into small, manageable pieces and I put it off until August.

I did realize this past summer/year that my goal is not to have a pre-made curriculum that I stick to. Good teaching is about planning in advance, and then changing your plans to fit the needs of your students. That realization took a huge weight off my shoulders. But it isn't enough. My units are better when I plan them in advance, because then I have time to change them at least 3 times: once before I start, and twice after I start. Which is where the inability to self-regulate comes in.

Just like with food, drink, athletics, TV, cleaning, and other areas of my life, I cannot do a little bit of planning. It's either all or nothing, zero or sixty, and nothing in between. I have this image in my head of how it should be. It's filed away in the "HAHAHA good luck keep dreaming" section of my brain. I come home, spend 20 minutes grading, then half an hour planning a unit that will take place no less than 3 weeks in the future. I don't grade all the papers in one night, and I don't plan the unit in one night. Both things happen in bits and pieces, appropriately spaced out to allow me to watch one, or maybe two episodes of CSI: Miami a day and run under 5 miles a day.

The fact that it took me 30 seconds to convince myself to write "5" miles instead of a higher number is crystal clear evidence of the fact that this WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

My real question is this: IS THAT A BAD THING?

This week was the most productive vacation I've had since teaching. Again, that's not setting the bar high. Usually I do nothing for 7 days then spend 10 hours on each final weekend day. I've gotten accustomed to it. But this week was different. I spent an hour each day doing something productive, even if it wasn't directly related to my job. On Thursday, I even spent 3 hours revising my self-evaluation for work. Then I stopped, even though I wasn't done. It was like a miracle. Angels sang.

Then Friday (today) happened, and the mountain of work began to block out the sun. I couldn't enjoy the Vampire Diaries because I was so panicked about grading, so I finished watching it while half paying attention and denying the fact that I was only half paying attention, then sat down at 9 p.m. to begin chipping away at that mountain.

I started with grading my 7th grade's most recent drafts. I love doing it this way, because I keep a notebook opened beside me, and as I grade, I jot down ideas for what to teach next. It's truly the best way to do it, and whenever I can, I do. After about two hours of this, I started inadvertently sliding into planning mode. This, too, is a typical occurrence. (SIDENOTE: F words with two double consonants). I go from grading story after story and writing occasional notes to writing detailed notes and grading an occasional story.

Today it was awesome. I did the usual: Opened a document, titled it "What do do for the remaining two-ish weeks of fiction with my 7th graders" and started listing, brainstorming, rambling, and generally thinking on paper (well, onscreen).

AND IT WAS AWESOME.

Everything came together so well. I'm trying to think of an appropriate metaphor, and there's yarn in front of me, so I keep thinking I should compare it to the strands being wound together, but that would imply that I had all the pieces to begin with and just needed to twist them together, which is not at all true. A french braid would be more accurate. I started with three important pieces, wove them together, and gradually, as I thought of additional pieces, I added them too. Sometimes I had to backtrack and fix a bumpy part (read: scaffold skills more effectively). Some pieces fell out, but that was okay. By the end, I had a unit that resembled a stronger, more elaborate, connected version of the three pieces I started with.

AND I LOVED IT.
My back hurts. My eyes are dry, and I want to rip my contacts out. My feet are asleep. My sleep schedule is shot to hell. But I genuinely love watching the pieces come together.
But what happens next? After this metaphorical 12-mile run, do I require a recovery period until my knuckles stop bleeding, my blisters heal, and I can walk upstairs comfortably again?

So I wonder: Do other people do this in several small, pieces of time? I guess I wouldn't know, but I suspect I would have trouble making a unit in 12 half-hour blocks rather than one 6-hour block. I don't know if I've ever tried that. I think every time I have tried, I've done by accident what I did tonight on purpose: Planned for 6 hours nonstop. To answer your question, yes, that was the plan. At 9 p.m. I started working, and I was 95% sure that I would still be awake and working at 3 a.m. God, does that make me a freak? Do I care?

Here's what I really wonder:

1. Am I capable of stopping? Typically, I can't stop after 30 minutes because I'm worried I'll miss an idea that I otherwise would have thought of. Or, I can't stop because I'm worried that I'll miss the next 30 minute chunk, so why put off until tomorrow what you can do in one inhuman 6-hour chunk in the middle of the night right now..? It's like preemptive procrastination. OH GOD. I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed by the phrase I just created.
2. What if it's not a bad thing? What if I really plan better this way? Can I keep going like this in a more organized fashion? Is there a way to regularly plan in 6-hour chunks so that I don't go insane / get unhealthy / get metaphorical blisters? Should I try? 
3. Is it because I'm wired to have difficulty regulating, or the nature of my job, or both? Let's ignore the nature-versus-nurture debate, and look at the facts: For 26 years, I have functioned in this way, in most areas of my life. I have failed many times and succeeded many times. Should I change? If so, in how many areas should I focus on this change? Is it possible? 
4. Would things be different if I hadn't chosen such an all-encompassing, 24/7/365 job? Would things be different if I left my job at work? 

 Something does have to change. Eventually, at least. It's fine now, when I'm completely alone and only responsible for myself, but eventually I'll have responsibilities beyond that, like marriage, family, children, etc. 

For now, I will have to be content writing overly-detailed blog entries about it at four in the morning. Yes, now it's 411 a.m. I should go to bed.

Well, I apologize for the length of this blog. Though this blog primarily functions as a way for me to write, and having an audience is not the primary goal.

You know, I am actually quite glad that I wrote this. This is the first time in my life I've really thought about this in any depth, and God knows it's been there the whole time. I think writing this helped me process it. And processing it will help me deal with it for the years to come. So oh well if it's too long.

Plus, no one made you read it, right?

UGH. I can't even regulate my rationalizations.

Living like a writer?

We have writer’s notebooks, lists of writing territories, explorations, drafts, and poems. We brainstorm, share ideas, model ways to vary our syntax and diction, and how to edit. We share, comment, and reflect on our writing. We share storie, do freewrites and more. But as writing teachers, are we really living like writers?

A long time ago, I thought living like a writer meant you got paid to write and your writing got published. Then I got a job reviewing trendy technology. I was paid 20 cents/word to write a review of iPod-wired Levi’s jeans. By the end of it, I wanted to punch someone. Then I applied to teaching graduate school.

A shorter time ago, I thought living like a writer meant you looked at the world differently. On the sidewalk in October, there is a pile of leaves. Some people walk through the leaves without a second thought. Some people pause for a minute to marvel at the way the four o-clock sun slants through the clouds and makes certain colors pop. Some people walk slowly around the pile, squinting, noticing that if they move their heads two inches to the left, the reds cast a light glow over the yellows. A writer picks up a pen.

Both definitions are true, but it took a blog and a roommate for me to realize the element I was missing. I posted an early draft of my memoir, so early that “rough” doesn’t cover the lack of polished prose. In passing, my roommate said that it had a lot of potential, and I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear. I wasn’t familiar with the fear associated with other people critiquing my writing. It had been three years, after all, since my last writing workshop. Even then, I focused on mainly fiction. This was TRUE. It was my mother, my wonderful mother, who’s in fantastic shape and still somehow needed emergency brain surgery. This was me, sobbing in front of my laptop, setting a timer for ten minutes and letting the fear envelope me as I tried to put it into words. This was less than two months ago, and my roommate thought she could just comment on it in passing, like it was nothing?

In an instant, I knew I would tell this story to all my future students. I ask them to share like it’s easy, like putting your thoughts on display for 27 people is easy, and I’m surprised when making participation 20% of their grade isn’t enough motivation? Sometimes my thoughtlessness alarms me. Sometimes I don’t know how 25 years and God knows how many tears haven’t taught me that it’s hard to put your feelings into words, and even harder to speak them out loud.

That’s what I’m missing. I love my students, but it’s not enough to write for them, and the 6.4 people who read my blog. To truly live like a writer, I need to write in a community of writers. A community of writers where I can swear, where I don’t have to conspicuously leave all the alcohol and sex out. A community of writers that aren’t 10-15-years old.

Most of the writing I’ve done in the past two years has been for my students. When I’m looking for an example of a quickwrite, I do it myself. I have dozens of lists of “My Writing Territories,” geared towards different groups and grade levels. I wrote my own “Relaxing Place” essay. But it’s been three years since took a writing class, three years since I wrote my thesis, graduated, and ended up back in middle school.

The single most meaningful teaching experience I’ve had this year is writing a memoir with my 8^th grade students. I used all the brainstorming and visualization techniques, half the drafting strategies, and found myself saying things like, “Show, don’t’ tell,” while revising my syntax. I found the common theme in a dozen rambly freewrites and stitched it together in a way that made sense. The experience of writing the memoir helped me process the experience I was writing about. I learned something about it along the way. It was too valuable an experience to keep to myself. Even though I assigned a pinch reader to take over when I felt the tears starting, even though I still cried while reading it to them, it changed the way I understand and teach memoir, and way I understand and teach writing.

It really made me question everything I know about writing. It made me wonder if, despite all the observing, writing, collecting, and sharing I do, I somehow was missing the point. Was I really leaving like a writer? Are any of us? Are we looking at the way the sun hits a pile of leaves and picking up a pen? Are we writing while crying and laughing and screaming into our computer screens? Are we hurling our words full-speed at the page like we expect our students to?

I don’t think I was living like a writer until I wrote that memoir.

Three days ago I asked a chronically-disorganized student to show me the Table of Contents in his Writer’s Notebook. He smirked, and said, “Fine, but let me see yours.” When I showed it to him, he said, “But, is it up-to-date Miss Wyner?” It wasn’t. Luckily, I managed to talk my way out of a detention.

The next day, I walked into my seventh grade class and held my notebook opened for them to see. “This is my homework,” I proclaimed. I showed them my two pages of memoir explorations, and explained that my half-page detailed list about Franklin Park wasn’t something I thought I would continue writing about, but I thought I might keep working on my exploration of swimming pools in my life.

A girl who often tells me how annoying she finds me looked up from her detailed schedule of scratching hearts into the table and said, “Wow. That’s really cool that you did that.”

Later, I let her teach me how to jerk. I failed. We all laughed as I tripped over my feet trying to do an alarmingly simple dance move. Life goes on.

BIG thoughts

Done.

Maybe that’s why I took so long to finish the 8th grade poetry book. Because on some level I knew that the completion of that would really mean the end. I mean, what do I really have left to do? Buy envelopes. Pack. Organize. Find those damn letters. Dayanara is afraid to go to high school so she’s subconsciously sabotaging herself with negative behavior. Is it all that different? Probably not.

the sheer volume of information I have in my head is overwhelming on a level I never thought possible. If I thought I could write it all down I’d try, but I don’t know how far I’d get before losing it completely. However, one skill I have perfected this year is learning to take my own advice, and practicing what I preach, so more often than not I find myself saying, “What would I tell a student who had this problem?” It works, surprisingly. I think using student strategies helps talk me down from my metacognitive cliff because a) they are good strategies, b) we are not that different and c) it keeps me humble. So, how would I advise myself?

First, a flood of ideas would deluge my mind. Then, I would consider where the student was coming from on every level I could think of, and suggest something I thought they could handle. So, what can I handle now? Right now, I need structure. I need some way to express these ideas, some medium, because or else I’ll burst (or deflate). But I think I need to structure it so I don’t freak myself out.

Marion’s idea of color coding everything is probably going to help in the later stages of this mental inventory and organization, but for now, I think I’ll just broadly compartmentalize. If I had to put all the info, duties, plans, necessities, every part of my life into three buckets, what would they be labeled?

Personal/me, curriculum, remembering as much as I can.

There. There are my buckets. So, here’s the plan which I just came up with forty five seconds ago. I’m going to carry a notebook. Or maybe a little, four-subject notebook. and I’m going to keep a running list. Listing is another thing I tell students to do, because it’s not as scary as paragraphs and sentences, and more often than not, when you take the pressure out of the equation, most of your bullet points end up being sentences or something like them anyway. But regardless, I’m going to list. Two lists for each, one on computer, one on paper. And that way, I’ll remember everything I can.

How did someone with such poor executive functioning skills by nature get a master’s degree in education? I sit, in this room, in this disastrous hellhole covered with clothes, middle school vampire literature, New Yorker magazines and school supplies, and marvel at my ability to teach nine different classes when I can barely locate my right foot. But I’m working on it. Baby steps.

Just start listing. You might miss something, a thought might fly out of your head while you’re using your brainpower to write another thought on paper, but if you never start writing, odds are you’ll lose both of those thoughts.

I wonder what a thought looks like. That would make a cool personification exercise. If you had to give a visual representation of “thought” how would you do it? Food for thought. HAH thought.

So, I’m glad I wrote all that. I’m sure it’s a mess, but the point is, I wrote it, and in doing so, I talked myself down off of my metaphorical, metacognitive cliff. I wrote to move time. Before I started, it was standing still, and I was not happy about that. I hate when time stops. It’s unnatural, illogical, impractical and wasteful, because inevitably when time starts up again, you miss the time you would have had if time hadn’t stopped. Say time stopped at 12:40 a.m. for roughly two minutes. When time starts again, it’s 12:42, and you’ve missed 120 seconds, skipped, gone, adieu.

But anyway, I hate it when time stops, and when I closed the document, it did just that. When time stops, you feel everything. Where your bangs lay on your forehead. Tongue against inside of your front teeth. Ring sliding down finger. Sometimes I swear sound slows down too, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

I don’t do well with big transitions. In fact, let’s call them negative transitions. I don’t mean bad, I mean diffused. When I suddenly have a lot less to do, and a lot more time, I flip out. The sudden loss of that is horrifying. It’s why I got depressed after running the marathon. I looked
up marathons overseas compulsively. I planned training runs. I even bought new sneakers. You need something to fill a void that size.

The real issue is that my 8th graders will be gone. My eyes are crossing with the revelation. I always tell them sometimes you have to write 5 pages of junk to get to that one great line. Well, I had to ramble about all this GodKnowsWhat to get to this place. The place where I’m going to lose a piece of myself when they go. It’s not weird or inappropriate, it’s just reality. They made me the teacher that I am today. Wow.

Need to sleep on that.

Sometimes I think I'll never have the time and energy to revise my own writing. Well, what I'm doing now is more important anyway.

This one time, in the hospital...

Rather than tell everyone what happened a million different times, I'll just sum it up here:

WARNING: ANNIE, DO NOT READ THIS. IT IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH OF STOMACH. CALL ME, AND I WILL TELL YOU AN EDITED VERSION. I REPEAT, ANNIE, DO NOT READ THIS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I was teaching my sixth graders and suddenly my stomach started burning. By the end of the day, I was puking in the parking lot. I don't really know how to describe it... "churning" is the word that comes to mind, though I'm not sure why. I just kept on hurling, it wouldn't stop. The worst thing was, I ate my mom's lasagna for lunch, so clearly it wasn't food poisoning, because my mom's a better cook than half the people on Food Network.

The worst part, by far, was my last chunk of teaching. Literary magazine and running are the only classes I teach where there's no one else near me, so I was just terrified that if I needed to puke, I'd have to throw up in my mouth and slyly spit it into the trash can. I couldn't leave the students, clearly.

Oh God and running? I gave them a time trial, and when they asked why I wasn't running, I said I was analyzing their gaits. True, if by analyzing gaits I actually meant trying not to ralph all over the gym floor.

Anyway, I called my doctor when it hadn't stopped after 5 hours, and she said to call an ambulance. Of course, I thought that was ridiculous. I mean, there were probably people who actually needed ambulances, so clearly I wasn't going to occupy one. I figured I'd tough it up.

Then came the blood.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure, throwing up blood is probably one of the scariest things in the world, and I've been through some scary shit. I will now take the time to make a list of the few things that are scarier than throwing up blood:

1. bleeding out your ears (which means you probably have a spinal or brain injury)
2. the scene in the Jack@ss movie when they give themselves papercuts between their fingers and toes
3. moldy cheese
4. being completely irrelevant

Anyway, when that happened, I made a mental note to buy extra whitening toothpaste and called a cab. Interesting note: cabs aren't supposed to take you to the hospital if you're sick, because of liability, I assume. When I requested to have a cab sent to my apartment to take me to the Emergency Room of Beth Israel, the man was skeptical. I insisted that I was visiting my sister (I don't have a sister), and to my surprise, he actually asked me questions!

What do you do when that happens?

Wait a second, on what planet does that ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

Well, in my case, it was a Tuesday, so with House MD still fresh in my mind, I responded, "Lupus." Questioning ceased.

Looking back, I must have looked like a wreck. I wore pajamas, because I figured if I wore clothes I'd just have to take them off anyway, and before I could fill out paperwork I had already thrown up three more times. I was given a complimentary bucket. I still have it. I did not actually throw up in the bucket. I missed. Oops.

So, the ER is actually much nicer than it appears on TV, although the doctors weren't nearly as attractive. I got hooked up to IVs and given lots of fluids (weird word, fluids), anti-nausea meds, and they stuck weird things all over me and put me in machines and then, I realized the unthinkable.

In real life, McDreamy has grey hair.

So sad.

But still so hot.

I will say one thing though. Asking the doctors all about their love lives is a great way to pass the time. That is one of the true elements of Grey's Anatomy.

Oh God, and my mother was of course, going nuts. I told them not to come, because I was fine, and to their credit, they did wait about three hours before my mother decided that since she was going to be on the phone with me every ten minutes anyway, she may as well drive down there.

I would have been fine, but thanks guys. Your witty banter helped considerably. And walking the mile to the 24-hour pharmacy in Copley (since I got out at like, 2) would've sucked.

So, hopefully at some point in my life, I will get an iron-clad immune system and avoid situations like these. They always say the first few years of teaching are the hardest on your body, and I'm now positive that's true. No hard feelings, students. It was pretty clear where the point of origin of the illness was (the name is too confusing to remember. Gastronanahanawhatawhosasomething). I compared IV bruises and tape marks with my students two days later, and my God, the only thing worse than throwing up blood as an adult has got to be throwing up blood as a twelve-year-old. My poor girls. And maybe boys, too, who knows who's caught it by now.

So, I came out of the situation bruised and with a free bucket. And two fewer sick days. Oh well. I guess they exist for a reason.

So, I should really stop starting every paragraph with "so," because that's redundant and unnecessary.

Loveyouall,
LW