Straightening Some Things Out

Home Again.

It's Thursday and I'm at home sick once again. What have I done to myself?! Maybe I should have stayed home at the first sign of being sick so that I could get better right away instead of having to stay home 1.5 days in a row. Oh well. What's done is done.

See, I'm getting wiser already. Staying home when I need to stay home and accepting the fact. Yippidee.

I need to be more careful about which comments I take to heart and which I comments I let slide off of me like water droplets on a duck's back (that was a terribly awkward analogy). In recent weeks, I almost internalized comments such as "Why should I listen to you, you can't even control your class?" and "I hate this class, I don't learn anything in here" and have completely ignored wiser, more constructive comments like "Go home, it's 8pm... You need to rest.", "You're a first year teacher, don't expect to get it all right right now, and don't beat yourself up when you don't", and "Stay home if you're sick. We need a healthy April at school."

Grow Up.

I mentioned earlier that it's tricky business learning how to teach and learning how to be a grown-up at the same time. Thankfully, I'm not the only young teacher at my school. Thankfully, I have many real grown-up teachers to learn from at my school.

My blog used to be titled, "From Growing Pains to Grown-Up Pains". This title came into being about 4 years ago or so, during my college transition. I don't mean transition from high school to college or my transition from undergrad to graduate school -- I mean the years during college which, really, was one gigantic transition. If being a little fish student in a high school pond is being in Mom's belly, and the immediate life-after-grad-school is  infancy, then college is Mom's birth canal.

Anyhoo, here I am at infancy.

Lessons on Being a Grown Up (aka, Infancy)

Damn those Dishes
I'm learning how to wash my dishes no matter how tired I am. This does not mean that I wash my dishes every day or even every 4 days. Truth. It's pretty disgusting in my kitchen. Learning how to wash my dishes no matter how tired I am just means that I no longer wait until I have the time/energy to wash the dishes, I just do it as immediately as I possibly can (which, OK, is sometimes every 5 days or so. Again, don't come over any time soon).

Adequate Sleep
Besides weekends, I've been going to bed between 9:30-10:30 every night. Yes, 1/3 of my days are devoted to sleeping. I'm not going to feel bad about it because 2/3 of my day is spent being 100% more efficient (and enjoyable) than if I did not get enough sleep. There's a math problem for you.

Work is Work is Not Life
I've blogged about this recently. I will afford myself roughly 10 hours of work per day, no more. Any ends left untied will have be left untied until the next day, the day after, or sometime later in the future. As I learn and as I get better (at life), my productivity within those 10 hours will increase.

Ironing Out Wrinkles
Literally. I have not ironed a single outfit for work yet in the past month  -- I've mostly gotten away with clothes that don't look too bad or wearing clothes that I bought so recently that they still have the nice creases down the front and back middle of each pant leg. I know how to iron my clothes, now it's just a matter of actually doing it.

Going to the Doctor When I'm Sick
Yay, benefits of my very own! It is time to allow this package to benefit me.

I'm Ignoring You
I'll be honest, I actually said this to a student the other day. "Ms. Angeles! Ms. Angeles! Ms. Angeles, did you check my homework? Ms. Angeles!" That's about when I said it, I think. I'm not sure, because I was ignoring her, so I wasn't sure what she saying. Luckily, she didn't take it personally. I'm learning to cut out excess stimuli in my life. I can't and I refuse to attend to every minor detail for the sake of addressing more pressing issues.