distance: trying to get some.

with the school year over (yes, school is still technically in session, but rich people eat foie gras and that shit is technically bird liver...how's that for a nonsensical, non-sequitur dismissal?), i'm still too close to the thing to really get any cogent thought about it together.

i miss the kids.

shit, damn, do i miss the kids?

i don't like adults. seriously.

okay. yeah.

anyway, rest assured, i'll write some nonsense about this whole thing, if only to try and give shape to an amazingly unwieldy experience. for now, however, as i sit daily in the school library grading regents exams, i am struck by one, unquestionable truth.

set of truths.
series of truths?
battery of truth missiles?

phalanx of ten thousand armored truth-bears with very pointy swords coming to fuck my day right up?

yeah, that one.

big teeth, too.

i fucked up this year. oh shit, did i fuck up.

and those bears are pissed. hells yes, they are furious bears. FURIOUS.

looking back with, as of right now, beer-colored glasses, i have trouble figuring out how i taught anything between september and now. did i teach? was i a teacher? where have i been for the last nine months?

i can see now how i made more mistakes than i had any business making. how i missed the point over and over again. how i taught the wrong things at the right time and the right things at the wrong time. and how, more often than i'd like to admit, what i did wasn't teaching them a goddamn thing.

now, i can anticipate the response of family and friend alike: yeah, but you recognize where you can get better, that's a good thing. recognizing it shows you give a shit, and you can do it right next time.

there are two problems there, both of which have the armored truth-bears a-callin'.

first, and the lesser of the two: there is no "right" way. this shit is as subjective and wily as any art. you have to have a feel for the thing and an intuition to make it work, along with some severely fucked-up focus and want for said thing to work. what is "right" is about as easy to grab as water out of a spigot.

second, and infinitely more important: these kids can't just be my lab. if i fucked up, it isn't like they get to do it over (yeah, some if them will do it over...i know). i get to do it over next year, they don't. they move on having missed stuff they should have learned. this will, i repeat, will be an issue for them.

i'm starting to see how i can be "not bad" at this job. note that i didn't say "good." good is still a while off.

that said, it still doesn't excuse me from being responsible for what i should have been all along. what they deserved.

being a yeoman is just not acceptable. hopefully, i'm getting better. i just hope that i can get better enough for the next crew to get what they need.

apologies that this was a bit down, just knocking the toys out of the attic, as it were.

perspective and distance.

admitting you have a problem is the first step to fixing it...or so my friends who don't drink so well tell me.

--november