Stress

I have learned a few things in the first weeks of class. I have learned I need to be more organized than my advisor. I have learned that getting up early is easy once you have to do it a few days in a row. I have learned I still do not like getting up early, however, I have noticed I feel much better all day when I do. Since getting up has become a habit, I have tried to restart the habit of working out. It is way easier to work out when you get up before noon. Still have not turned this blogging thing into a habit though. I am working on it. Clearly I have picked up Data's habit of never using a conjunction. I do like the way writing works without all those apostrophes floating all over my pages. Anyway, back to class. I had to do a little mini lesson in front of my peers. I chose to do mine on concussions and the importance of the King-Devick test as a baseline for all athletes. I have had my bell rung a few times in my life, in sports and real life. I just fail to understand why doctors, other than my wife, and coaches do not see the importance of establishing a baseline for athletes to ensure they are not put back on the field after suffering a concussion. I held my fingers up and he got the right answers so I put him back in. Forget that a blind man could pass this test because every coach holds up three fingers every time. But hey, I guess getting the star linebacker back in the game before the other teams scores is way more important than worrying about brain damage. Maybe this is because the coaches took one too many hits themselves. Rub some dirt on it. Take a salt pill. Shake it off. I know I heard every one of those hundreds of times throughout the years. Considering how litigious society has become, I am surprised schools do not require better handling of traumatic head injuries. If I as a teacher treated students the same way coaches treat them I would be fired, sued, and plastered all over Fox, MSNBC, CNN, and every moron comedian that thinks they are a good source for news because they can make a lame joke at someone else's expense. Sorry for the rant on what passes for broadcast news these days. Anyway, back to school. I am finding myself frustrated by the lack of attention I feel my advisor is giving to the field class. I have picked up a few little tricks I plan to use but more importantly I have learned to see things through the eyes of students. I forgot how annoying it can be when the teacher expects more from you than they expect from themselves. I'm done. Time to get a drink and maybe a cigar. I know it is only 11am right now. Since I was getting up at noon and I have been getting up before eight at the latest now I figure I can add at least four hours to my clock. So that makes it at least 3pm. That is not too early for a drink, right?

Day 2 (ish)

I have not really decided whether or not I will write everyday or just class. I really want to go the everyday route but I will have to get myself in the habit of doing so. Anyway, another day of class that begin much like the one the week before. the real difference was that instead of me staying up all night, I woke up at 2am and could not sleep. This led to another session of killing radioactive beasties in the distance future in the remnants of Las Vegas. Still not good for getting you in the mood for sleep in case you were wondering. So another anxiety filled night leads to a very tired student engaging in the thirty mile jaunt to school. Luckily for me, the weather is nice and I got to make the drive topless. My Mustang not me personally. Otherwise that would be really weird. So I get to class along with my fellow classmates, all four of them, (small schools are great for those of us with poor name recall skills)  and the teacher has decided that we were not going to have class that day. Strange considering she was there, we were there, it was class time, and we had nothing else to do because we had all assumed we would be having class that day. The good news is the rain was holding off and I got to cruise home topless listening to Buffett and various other beach music singers. The bad news is that my anxieties over teacher will have to exist for a little while longer until I am back in front of students. On a topic unrelated to myself as a student teacher, but related to the skill set I will need, my niece had an incident with her coach that made me realize that I probably already have more skills than many people that are already working with kids. The coach had all of the players in front of the parents last night and split them up according to skill level. This in itself is no great crime but the way he did it was ridiculous. He actually said, these are the good players to one group, these are the mediocre players to another, and the players are lousy to the final group. Pretty lousy thing to do in front of all of the players and their parents. That is not the way to deal with middle school kids. I am not saying that you need to tell every kid that they are as good as Messi, but come on dude. You need to have a little respect for the players and their fragile egos. I have seen this guy coach and I really thing he is a tool. One of those morons that always coaches their kid and thinks the kid is Pele but the kid plays more like Pele's grandma. Not withstanding my personal feeling towards his coaching style and abilities, you cannot call out kids in front of each other and onlookers. If I was in class and told them I was spilling them into groups of smart, average, and stupid, I would be canned and sued before the period was over. Oh yah, then this coach said, okay lets go out and see how well the really good players can do. @$$#*(3.  Seriously. No coach I have ever worked with would have put down kids like that in front of their peers. Not even the college coaches do that kind of stuff. So I guess I have learned a little even without class this week.

Day 1

Not a great start to student teaching. Full of self-doubt, I spent the entire night not sleeping. Of coarse, I also did not do anything productive with my time. I put about five hours in Fallout New Vegas. Killing creatures mutated by nuclear fallout is surprisingly useless in helping you sleep. I have teachers and fellow students tell me all the time that I will be a great teacher. I am really not bragging here. I am just pointing out that I never listen to other people's good opinions of me. I do manage to love the negative feedback however. Anyway, first day of field class and I have been up since 3am. Yikes. Class was pretty interesting though. I hope it will make me more prepared to take on my own classroom next year. It seems like we will actually be learning some good management skills and types of teaching angles. I have had high hopes for these classes before and thus far, I have been underwhelmed by what I am being taught. I really do not feel like I am ready to take students futures into my hands. I am hoping this next year of classroom time will give me the tools and confidence I need. No homework for class yet. Of coarse in keeping with what I have come to expect from this school, the Blackboard for the course is not yet set up. Very typical of the disorganization I have been dealing with since I started here. Hopefully they get on the ball before next week's class. I will not hold my breathe though.

Pshrink is a great word

I wonder if writers talk to pshrinks less than people who do not write. I could be that the jumble of thoughts spewing from a writer's brain forces him or her to see mental health professional just to shut the valve off. Writing does give you the chance to vent, regroup, and refresh. Then again, sometimes it just opens up new gaping holes in your psyche. Maybe if you write about kitties and bunnies or rainbows and unicorns this would not be such a problem. However, if you rant on about Romney or Obama it is probably because you are trying to convince yourself that you are not the crazy one for actually supporting one of them. Pretty sure it works the same way for people like Bill Mahr and the members of Westboro Baptist Church as well. Maybe you are right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe you are the smartest person in the room, the country, the world. Then again maybe you are no better than the guy you passed on the street who is talking to a six foot tall rabbit who really is not there. After all isn't that what a writer does? Aren't I just carrying on a conversation with myself right now? I am clearly not talking to anyone else because most people only read their own writing because that is all they think is important. Tweeting, Facebook and the internet have seen to that. Since I can now see my words digitally they must be important and will last forever. I think writing may indeed lead to the latter of my first two quandaries.

Fake blog post

You know its funny....ever time I heard Holden Caulfield talking about phonies I always assumed he was talking about all of those people I love to despise. You know the jokers I am talking about. The idiot that assumes his work is so important that everyone reads it. He says with mock concern that he does not want his work published in the small college's poetry book because he is worried that some  nut-job from the middle east will blow up the school because he vaguely mentions a certain prophet. By the way, in preparation for my grammar test, nut job is a noun adjunct. How's that for pretentious. Maybe that makes my point about phonies. It is not just the knucklehead that tries to read to much into someone else's writing or art work but also the idiot that points out that knucklehead would be another noun adjunct. It is a painful thing to realize that you are the phony you loathe so much. It really has nothing to do with my writing. it has everything to do with the way I live my life. That is a depressing idea. Well, it is to me anyway. It may not come as much of a shock to anyone that would happen to read this. However, I really doubt anyone reads anything I write. I do have classmates that say they like my writing because it is funny. It could just be that I am the only student that just cannot take an assignment seriously enough to put his heart into it. Maybe I just have to make everything slightly irreverent or humorous because I do not want to expose myself (reflexive pronoun)  to ridicule that would inevitably come from having people tell you that you are a hack. Yikes. I am depressing myself here. I certainly have enough pain in my past that I should be able to write something without a dull edge to it. I guess when you spend your entire adult life running from your past it is difficult to come to terms with it long enough to get anything meaningful out of it.Maybe it is just the election that brings out all of my harbored inner hatred toward moe rons (Southern expression) that fell as if theirs is the only correct opinion. Clearly, they are the only ones smart enough to see what is really going on. Funny how these are the people who only find data that further cements their idea. As soon as they find someone that agrees with them they broadcast it all over their digital lives and spout "See, I am right you are wrong","I am smart and you are dumb". Talking about pointless rambling. Does anyone remember where exactly I was going with this?

Hey, I remember you.

Writing on a tablet is nowhere near as satisfying as banging out words on a computer. Come to think of it, even that is no substitute for the clanging, ringing, whooshing pulse of a typewriter. (kids a typewriter is an ancient computer with no monitor, viruses, or internet connection) Still, there is catharsis in actually letting your thoughts escape into black and white characters. Once it comes out it can be forgotten and the writer moves on.However, on the occasional sleepness night the author may be forced to reveiw works best left alone. After all, only Marty McFly and terminators can jump back in time. So what is the point of reliving history (ancient in some authors cases). The works of Yin remain poiniant as ever. Somethings are best left in their own new realities. Everyone should be their own hero, or antihero. Sidekicks are great to have around though.