The Curse of the Sub

Oh, Readers.
The purpose of this blog has always been to take the often silly and ridiculous things I experience in my life, and to share them with you. Occasionally life throws something your way, and it’s either laugh or cry, and I have always tried to be the type that laughs at the stupid or embarrassing things that happen to me (or that I do, more like it).
Well let me just say, my life has been CHOCK FULL of the absurd lately. As you all may know, my post-graduate job hunt has been going… poorly, to say the least. I finally decided to try subbing, because I live right by a lot of the schools in the district, and THEY CAN’T TURN ME DOWN. It’s also a great part time gig that doesn’t require you to have a set schedule. After I went through the steps to become a sub, though, naturally I finally got a call back from a job I applied to.
However, I hadn’t even been able to write up the post about what a disastrous experience my one and only job interview was (don’t worry, it’s coming though! UPDATE: Here it is!) before I got approved to be a sub yesterday and decided to take a position today in a desperate attempt to get at least one day of work on the upcoming pay cycle– because subs only get paid once a month, and it’s for the month before.

For me, getting approved to sub took way longer than it should have. You have to have copies of your Social Security card, and I discovered when I went to sub training that my parents apparently lost mine years ago and never replaced it, because that’s DEFINITELY not something you’ll ever need.

Thanks Mom and Dad!

I therefore had to go to the Social Security office (an adventure in and of itself) and request a new one, which didn’t come until Monday. Then I had to take my papers to the administration office, wait for my $59 (!!!!) background check to come through (which my parents had to pay for because I literally did not have enough money in my account), AND to be put into the system officially before I was able to sub.
Last night I finally got an automated call that told me I was in, and so I decided to take a look at the available jobs to see if there were any I wanted. The way subbing works is that teachers throughout the district put in a request for a sub on a website, and available subs can look through and decide if they want to take them. The nice thing about subbing is that you never have to accept anything; you can have a day off any time you need it without having to request off or anything like that.
I looked through all the available jobs, and saw one that was to sub in Spanish at the high school–the same high school I attended, mind you. I minored in Spanish, and so I thought, hey, why not!

I love this joke so much, thanks college education.

This morning I arrived bright and early at my former high school, because you need to be there at least twenty minutes before the first bell rings. I also needed to get there extra early because they have rebuilt the majority of my high school since I attended it. It is now giant, fancy, and terrifying. The new cafeteria looks like it should have been in High School Musical, I swear to god.
Eventually I wandered my way to something called the freshmen office, which did not exist when I was in high school. In fact, when I was in ninth grade, we were in our own separate building, which has now been turned into a fifth and sixth grade center (I don’t even know guys, it’s bizarre).
I checked in without too much problem, got my little sub sheet, and then a kindly teacher led me to my room since I had no idea where to find it. In a disorienting twist of fate, I was actually subbing in an old part of the building that had existed (and where I had Spanish) when I was in school, but was now connected to buildings that did not exist when I was in school. Along the way I saw my 8th grade math teacher in the hall and said hi, which was pretty strange.
Luckily, my teacher I was subbing for was super prepared, and had written everything the kids would need to do on the board, as well as leaving detailed instructions for me of what I needed to do. Mostly I would be taking attendance and giving kids extra packets if they had forgotten their workbooks, and just ensuring no mayhem ensued. I wrote my name on the board, which was absolutely surreal, since my mother has been a teacher my entire life, and she is the undisputed Mrs. Rowe in my mind.

You cannot understand how wrong this felt.

My first period class came in, and naturally it was a huge class that really liked to talk. Trying to be a good sub, I took attendance right away and then sent a student to the office with it. I got them started on their assignments and told them that it was my first time subbing so they had to take it easy on me (that was a mistake). They took this to mean that they could chat as much as they want, and I got tired of getting onto them after a while so I just let them. So I got everything sorted, aaaaand… then I did nothing.
Seriously. There was like nothing for me to do. As I would come to realize throughout the day, subbing is both simultaneously incredibly stressful and incredibly boring. This boredom led me to messing about endlessly with things on my desk, and I ended up taking a minute to actually read my sub info– and what did I see but a note about how you are NOT supposed to send kids to the office with attendance because someone will come from it.
Oh, fantastic.
Not even an hour in, and I’ve already messed something up.

Just swell.

Even better, a student that I had turned in as absent ended up coming late, so I just had to hope he had checked into the office. A girl came in to pick up my attendance, and I had to tell her I’d already sent it. She looked at me like I was an idiot, a very lowering feeling. Yeah, okay, girl who is eight years younger than me, I get it. I messed up. Whatevs.
So I was off to a rocky start, but I was resolved to do better second period. Practice makes perfect right? So my second group came in, and, blessedly, they were perfect. Sat down, got right to work, and were very quiet. I made sure I took attendance, and did NOT send it with anyone. I also wrote a note on the back apologizing for sending first hour’s attendance with a student, and making sure they knew the student I had marked absent actually had showed up. I had no problems with these kids, which made me even more bored. I had already looked at every poster in the room and messed with every available thing on my desk, and I felt like a creep just staring at the kids.

“hey kids don’t do drugs, also don’t get an English degree or you’ll end up subbing in your old high school”

Finally I gave in and looked at my phone. It was my turn on a game of Words with Friends, so I played that–and of course, a video ad came on after, blaring loudly into the quiet room. My class just looked at me like I was such a loser–again, a very lowering feeling. Whatever, kids. I make 60 bucks for doing this, and you chumps are doing it for FREE. Suckas.
After second period, I had lunch time. That means I was supposed to eat lunch at ten thirty. TEN THIRTY. For almost every day of the past ten months, I haven’t even been awake by ten thirty, how am I supposed to eat my lunch now?! During sub training they told us we weren’t supposed to really go off campus during our lunch, but I didn’t know what the procedure was if we were eating at the school and I was too scared to brave the High School Musical cafeteria by myself.
So I found my way back to the freshmen office to ask what to do. The moment I walked in, the student office aide took one look at me and goes, “Ohhh, don’t you look adorable?!”

That’s better, eight years younger than me kid. I have hope for your generation yet. I spoke with secretary, who informed me that I was actually more than welcome to go off campus to grab lunch, as long as I was back in time. I hurried over to the nearest Subway, thinking I would just get myself a sandwich and save it to eat later. Luckily there was no line, and I made it back with about five or ten minutes to spare.
My third period class appeared soon after, and I took roll. They started out very talkative, and one kid asked out loud what “cansado” meant. Oh yesss, here was my chance to show off my skills. “TIRED!” I almost shouted, excited because I knew the answer. Also, because I was feeling it very strongly.
The kids were impressed, naturally, and somebody goes, “Whoa, she speaks Spanish!”
“Oh I have a minor in Spanish, actually,” I told them impressively. “So you can totally ask me if you have questions, and I might be able to help you.”

There’s a 30-40% chance I can actually assist you!

They settled down pretty quickly, and did their work quietly, so I thought it was going to be another nice, easy class. Unfortunately, that was not to be, and I ended up having to threaten to send a kid to the office. It felt very strange, I just kept thinking in my head I don’t really have the authority to send someone to the office though, surely? Luckily I didn’t actually have to resort to such drastic measures. I guess my intimidating face was pretty impressive.
The hour after that was my planning hour, so I went and visited my 8th grade Spanish teacher since her room was right by mine, and along the way I found my sophomore math teacher’s room as well, so I chatted with them. It was quite the blast from the past, especially since my former middle school Spanish teacher was now at the high school in the old room where I had Spanish in high school. I finally was feeling hungry, so I ate my Subway sandwich. It tasted slightly strange after sitting out for awhile, but I had little other choice.
Fifth period showed up, and kids started filtering in. One student came in and goes, “Wait, you can’t be our sub. How old are you? You’re not old enough to be a sub!” I assured her that I was 22, and, in fact, more than old enough to be the sub. “Oh you look like a teenager!” she said disbelievingly. WELL YEAH YOU KNOW WHAT, SO DO YOU OKAY.  If I’m being entirely truthful, however, I was surprised it took that long for a student to say it.
After the bell rang, I started taking roll. Halfway through, however, they came over the intercom to announce the winners of a week long fundraising contest between the different grades. My class was made up of freshmen, and they let out a deafening cheer when it was announced that they had won, and were to report to the auditorium for a reward assembly. I had to yell them down in order to finish taking roll. I was almost as equally excited as they were, because it meant that I had an unexpected free hour.

I’M FREEEEEE

Now, you may be saying to yourself, okay, that stuff you’ve told us so far is kind of embarrassing, Sara, but that’s nothing SERIOUS. I mean, after the cheesecake pizza story or getting lost and missing your friend’s wedding, a mix up in attendance is negligible. And beginning of fifth period Sara would have agreed with you– I was actually mildly surprised at how relatively normal things were going. But as fifth period wore on, I began to feel slightly unwell. My stomach started getting wonkier by the minute, and finally I felt the urge to go to the restroom in fear I was going to lose my lunch.
I didn’t throw up, so I washed my face and neck with cool water to try and help. I went back to my room for the start of sixth period, and sat for awhile before I realized that the assembly must last two hours, and I would have another free period.
I wanted to be excited, but I was not feeling so hot.

It felt a little like this, except instead of the stocks I fell into tummy upset.

I was feeling progressively worse and worse, and when I finally ran for the bathroom, this time my lunch made its unwelcome reappearance.  I started shivering soon after and felt hot and cold, and I realized that I was more than likely not going to be able to cover my final seventh period class. I wasn’t sure what to do so I tried to call my sister (she’s going to be a teacher and has subbed before) so I could ask her what to do. She didn’t answer, however, and I remembered she was taking our dog to the vet. So finally, unsure but feeling even worse, I made the long trip back to the freshmen office yet again.
Of course, the secretary was speaking with a parent, so she told me to just sit down and wait. And so, trying not to throw up again, I sat down and waited for five or ten minutes while she finished with the parent. She then called me forward, looked at me, and then goes, “Ohh, you’re the sub! I’m sorry, I thought you were a student!”
Sigh.
After embarrassingly explaining the situation, the secretary attempted to call a few people to see if they could cover the class. Finally she told me, “Just go on home, hon. You can’t sub if you’re throwing up.” In a fluster of shame and nausea, I rushed back to the classroom, collected my things, and drove my way home, where I fell into bed and slept about four hours.

So there you have it, Dear Readers. My first attempt at substituting ended in an episode of suspected food poisoning. I’m guessing that things went south when I let my sandwich sit out for a couple hours before eating it. So… in a ridiculous joke of the universe, my first day of subbing was ruined by none other than Subway. Because, you know, my life is one big cosmic joke.

I’m just going to take this as a sign that I was absolutely right when I decided I was not meant to be a teacher.

A Vignette of the May 20, 2013 Tornado in Moore, Oklahoma

I know this is going to sound cliche, but it is truly strange to me how much can change in a short period of time.
I had no idea when I last posted that the next two weeks were going to be some of the craziest of my life. When last I left you, I was on the verge of going to my friend Kady’s bachelorette party. Let me just say that we now are nearly certain that I am allergic to alcohol and the doctor agreed, and I will never again drink more than a glass or two at a time (no one mistook me for a man, at least, so that’s something).
That was on a Saturday. The next day, while I was busy being violently ill in reaction to my suspected allergy, I was vaguely aware that in certain parts of Oklahoma, some pretty seriously awful tornadoes were going through my state. A few people even ended up killed. I remember as I was hazily stumbling out of the doctor’s office looking at a tv in the waiting room and being horrified by the destruction I was seeing. That was May 19.
The next day was May 20 which, if you watch national news at all, you probably know was the day that one of the worst tornadoes recorded ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, and killed 24 people.
In Oklahoma, especially in May, people are pretty used to the threat of bad weather. I have grown up with a healthy terror of tornadoes and a intimate familiarity with the steps of taking your “tornado precautions.” Even on Saturday when I was at the bachelorette party, there was risk of bad hail, and it poured down torrential rain on us for awhile. We knew that the next couple of days were high risk for tornadoes and dangerous weather. The problem with living in Oklahoma for a long time is that there’s always risks during the spring for tornadoes, and you eventually just get to the point where you’re ready for them, but try to believe that it won’t end up being too bad. If you believed that every time there was severe weather in Oklahoma it was going to be as bad as May 20, no one would live here. We would have all had heart attacks at some point and moved to Europe.
My dad is a mailman, so he gets off work pretty early in the afternoons generally. My sister and I usually wait for him to eat lunch, and we did so that Monday. We went to a local BBQ restaurant (one that I worked at last summer, as a matter of fact), thinking we had time to eat before the weather got too serious. We were still in the midst of our sandwiches when rain started pouring down. Suddenly, the tin roof of the building was pounding like a bass drum at a rock concert, and we ran to a window to watch in horror as pea to golf-ball sized hail started flinging itself down on our hapless car in the parking lot. People started running out, dodging hail madly, to get to their cars and try to find somewhere to shelter them.
We weren’t going to take that route, so we sat down and quickly finished our food. Luckily, it seemed as though the hail and rain had started letting up, so we decided to try and get to our house, which was not even five minutes away. We had barely pulled out of the parking lot when the first giant pieces of hail started thudding down on us. The truly big ones were only sporadic, thankfully, but that made them particularly startling when they did hit. I kept letting out a little scream, terrified that our window would break out before we got home. To our relief this was not the case, and we managed to get home. We shielded our cars as best we could under our trees, but they were noticeably dinged up.

We were so incredibly lucky that day. The storm that eventually produced the horrible Moore tornado formed over the area we live, dropped that hail on us, and then moved on. We were never in fear, or really in danger. The hail storm lasted probably less than 30 minutes. We lost power briefly but had it back shortly. We spent the day watching Moore be ripped apart, as well as other towns beyond it. It was eerie listening to the weather stations because it was the most awful sense of deja vu. I was seven years old on May 3, 1999, when the worst tornado this state has ever seen ripped through Moore the first time. We were at a hockey game downtown, and I remember we had to leave it to go to a nearby  underground parking garage. We walked outside and I can still see, clear as day, what that tornado looked like. It was enormous, and nearly unbelievably black. It dominated the sky, even from miles away, looking like some sort of elemental monster.
On May 20, 2013, we followed desperately the stories of victims and the search for survivors. I cried when they talked about the schools being hit. My mother is a teacher, my sister will graduate in December with her Early Childhood Education degree, and I spent four years working in daycares. I adore children, and teachers are very close to my heart. One of the teachers from Plaza Towers Elementary is the sister of a girl I played volleyball with in middle school and high school, and for a while they did not know if she was dead or alive, though she survived.
I have talked about my best friend Kasey on here numerous times, and her family is like a second family to me. Her father, someone I consider a second father to me, is a teacher in Moore. The gym and part of his school was destroyed, and his car was totaled. Kasey had to walk two miles to get to the school to even see if he was okay, which by a miracle he and everyone else in his school were. My heart shattered on Monday night when we finally turned off the tv, with reports coming in that the death count could even be as high as 91.
The next day when we heard that the number had been reduced to 24, I could not help being thankful, though I was in no way happy. It’s just that when I watched videos of that storm and looked at the damage, it is amazing to me that more lives were not lost. And the strength and love and dignity my state showed filled my heart with pride. The support we received from the world was overwhelming, and humbling. It seemed almost strange to me, just how much people cared. I saw articles from newspapers in England and Britain talking about Oklahoma, and the Nightly News broadcast from here. When two English Premier League soccer clubs played an exhibition match in St. Louis, they teamed up with the Cardinals to raise money for children affected by the storms. They wore black armbands to honor those lost, and all stood together behind a sign that said “Together in support of Oklahoma.” It was a bit jarring; I am so used to bad weather and the destructive powers of tornadoes that it seemed strange to me that people wanted to help us. It reminded me that perhaps the only good thing to come out of the darkest of events is the wonderful, amazing people who step forth to bring light again, and that those people are everywhere.
Shortly after, one of my best friends, Stephanie, asked me to help her do laundry at a laundromat in my hometown because the water was out in all the ones by her house because of the storms. She is married to a youth pastor, my friend Gavin, and I just assumed they were gathering clothes to donate to people and they wanted to wash them. I rushed over to meet Stephanie, who had a younger girl with her that I had never seen before. Stephanie asked me to go help her bring clothes in from the car while the girl got the washing machines set up. When I got to her car and started sorting through stuff, I realized it was soaked and muddy, just covered with debris. Something clicked in my head, and I asked Stephanie, “Did that girl lose her house??” Stephanie looked at me like I was crazy, and said, “Yes, this is the stuff we could salvage when we all went out there to look.” We had about three or four bags of clothes for an entire family. Three or four bags of clothes for four people.
We carried the stuff back inside, and I suddenly did not know what to say to this girl, this fifteen year old who had lost her home not even 24 hours before. The best I could come up with was telling her how incredibly sorry I was. What amazed me was how gracious she was to me, how calm she was acting. I tried to imagine myself in the same situation, and could not imagine smiling, like this girl was doing. I realized she was wearing some of Stephanie’s clothes, and she had on an old, too-big, holey pair of Stephanie’s husband’s shoes, because Stephanie wore a smaller size and that was the best alternative they could come up with at the moment.
So we did laundry, and it was so surreal. I had to pre-wash a lot of the stuff by hand because it was so dirty with debris that it would have made everything else in the washer dirty if I didn’t. After we got all the washers loaded, I rushed back to my house (which was only about five minutes away) and quickly went through the embarrassing amount of clothes I had to see if I could find anything to give this girl. When I got back, Stephanie and I’s friend Lisa had showed up with literally her entire backseat stuffed with clothes to give, and I felt so proud to call Lisa and Stephanie my friends.
We put the stuff in the dryers at this point, and then sat down to just talk with her. She described what it was like going through what was left of her house afterwards, and she even told me how her brother was asleep when the tornado was coming because he worked nights. His girlfriend got ahold of him just barely in time, and he left about 10 minutes before the tornado destroyed their home. The whole time, she was so calm, making jokes and laughing, and I just didn’t understand how she did it. But finally she said to me, “I think I’m still in shock. I think that pretty soon it’s going to hit me, and I’m going to break down.” I didn’t even know what to say. My heart simply broke for her. I honestly wanted to cry, but if this brave girl was not, then I certainly wasn’t going to.
When the laundry was done, we folded it and divided it up according to which family member it belonged to. It was a humbling experience. Everything this family had to wear fit in three laundry baskets and a duffel bag. When it was time to go, she hugged me and thanked me so kindly for helping her, and I just felt so lacking. I wish I could have helped her more.
That Friday was Kady’s wedding, and it was beautiful and sweet and everything a wedding should be. It was a bright spot in what had been an otherwise very traumatic and heart-breaking few days. Saturday I went with my sister to one of her long-time friend’s weddings, and it was lovely as well. It helped me to remember that even in the worst of times, life goes on, and that happiness and joy come again, even when it seems impossible.
At the end of last week, I was hurting for my state, but so proud to live in it. I was amazed at the goodness of people and the peculiarities of life, yet things were getting back to normal.
But this is Oklahoma. In May. And things rarely stay normal for long.

If you would like to hear about my experiences with the tornadoes of May 31, check out my next post. This one is already way too long, and I should have written it sooner. I just didn’t feel ready to try and sum up something so monumental in a blog post, and now I have even more to tell you. I hope that you’ll want to read it.

Bless your heart,
Sara

PS “Bless your heart” is about as Okie a phrase as you can get, so it felt appropriate.

A Spoiler Alert to Freshmen: You Know Nothing, and Children Abuse Slides

Dear Readers.
There are many things in my life that I question myself about. I go through the world, probably 68% of the time, pretty much just wingin’ it and hoping the way I think stuff will go in my head is actually how it’s going to translate into real life. As a normal human being who is completely and disappointingly lacking in superhero-esque or TV character-like powers of foresight, I don’t know that when I make a decision that it’s going to bear itself out as the correct one. My inclinations, sadly, can be incorrect and go decidedly awry.
And then there are things that I one hundred percent for sure know are true.
Two of these things came to my attention rather forcefully today. The first involves college. I can remember like it was yesterday my freshman year of college; arriving at school all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on the verge of turning EIGHTEEN and pretty much being sure that I was a responsible, mature woman now who just had her life totally together.
It pains me now to think of that degree of intense, pathetic, sweet naivete. I thought I knew things when I started college; now I’m convinced college’s main lesson is to teach you that you don’t know anything. One of my classes where I feel the sting of this lesson keenly is in Dr. Crow’s Political Geography of the Modern World, every Tuesday and Thursday from 12 to 1:25pm. Dr. Crow is completely insane, and naturally one of the most beloved teachers on campus, including by me. You just honestly never know what’s going to come out of his mouth. From a man I am paying to teach me things, this is a quality I can respect; I like the surprising relevance and/or usefulness of whatever he’s telling us. What  I do not like about that class is that I arrive to it early. I get out of my first class at 11ish on Tuesday and Thursday; I eat lunch, and since it does not take me an hour to do it, I usually just stroll on over to class around fifteen minutes early.
Now, my college is a liberal arts college. We attract, how should I put this, interesting people. But hey, to each their own and all that, I tend to enjoy that diversity. And then, there are the times when I am subjected to soliloquies by kids in trench coats and round polarized glasses over the major mistakes Hitler made that caused his defeat. He actually stood up from his seat at the front of the class and gave a little mini-lecture to the approximately four of us that were there early. This guy’s voice was admiring of Hitler, I kid you not, and he sounded almost disappointed in the man, like he couldn’t quite believe someone whose mental acumen he so admired could’ve  made such fatal mistakes. Another legacy I’ve taken from college is a much deeper and even more horrifying understanding of the Holocaust, so I can’t exactly say that I was feeling too receptive to his tone. But it wasn’t just a sense of disappointment in Hitler that I felt a touch annoyed by; the kid was clearly just trying to show off his extensive World War II knowledge and prove that he was smarter than Hitler and never would’ve made such silly mistakes. I was most appreciative when one of the other people being subjected to this interrupted to say bluntly, “It’s easy to say that in hindsight.” The kid seemed completely stymied by this brilliant logic, and thankfully Dr. Crow came in almost immediately after so I didn’t really have to hear what he would’ve countered with. That was last week.
Today, Dr. Crow was on an especially crazy roll (we touched on mass serial killers at parent teacher conferences all the way to  how the world was going to turn into the plot of Mad Max), but he was saying some important and viable stuff. Of course, there’s the kid who sits in the corner who generally has an obnoxious comment to chime in with once or twice during class (there’s ALWAYS one), but he too was on a roll today. There seemed to be almost the shimmer of a heat wave in the corner he sits in today from the heat of the hostile stares directed at him. At one point during the class, he somehow managed to mention how he was a freshman taking an upper level class, and I actually said out loud to the girl in front of me, “Oh, of course he’s a freshman.”
So this is the first thing I realized today. The way you know for certain it’s time for you to graduate college is when you start disdainfully and grumpily talking smack under your breath about the stupid people in your class and tossing the word “freshman” around like a slur, and you subsequently feel triumphant when your assessment of them is proved right. Hitler guy is also a freshman, you might be shocked to hear. It makes me feel like some crotchety old woman who just wants to crush all that determined but often misguided confidence that seems to linger, aura-like, around underclassmen. It’s not fair, really, because there are some upperclassmen that I should probably never be left alone with, and there are equally delightful underclassmen. But as a senior in college, I know  that I actually don’t know anything, and I just want to yell out my bitter disillusionment in the form of  sayings like “You’re an idiot” and “You don’t know anything.”
This actually makes college sound very pointless and disheartening, and I didn’t have that intent at all. College is lovely; it’s very freeing realizing I don’t really know much. I mean, it’s a huge responsibility to have all the answers; now, as I’m about to graduate college, I have the whole world to go into and figure things out. So, shameless endorsement of the day, go to college because education is the bulwark of civilization, and if Dr. Crow is to be believed we need to really work on keeping up the whole civilization thing so Mel Gibson doesn’t end up the leader(?) of the world (I’ve never actually seen Mad Max).
And education leads me into my second realization of the day. As many students must, I had to get a job while I was in high school and continue it into college. Aside from approximately two years overall working in restaurants (an experience that will convince you, if nothing else, that getting an education is worth it), I have spent the majority of my laboring years working at daycares. For many people this is a horrifying prospect, but I love kids and actually enjoy (usually) my job. I’ve been working in daycare going on four years now, and it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything else in my life that has matured me as quickly as being responsible for numerous, small, astonishingly foolish lives (it’s almost reminiscent of how I feel around some freshmen). You get it together pretty quick if you want to be a successful daycare worker. Now, one of my responsibilities at various instances through out my daycare career has been to monitor kids while they play on the playground. For instance, playgrounds tend to be accompanied by slides. One of my greatest fights as a teacher is to make sure children go down a slide properly. If you’ve never worked with kids, this seems rather silly, doesn’t it?  I mean, it’s pretty simple. You walk up the stairs, you go down the slide. Ah, but if you think this, you have clearly never worked with children.
Because kids seem to love nothing better than to climb up the slide and even, at times, to try and slide down stairs. I don’t understand it, but it is undeniable. It happens constantly. Unfortunately for me, this is, for some reason, one of my greatest pet peeves. Perhaps it’s because the function of a slide should be so incredibly simple: up stairs, down slide. And yet, no matter how many times you get onto them, they will do it WRONG over and over and over again. It makes me slightly crazy.
So, my great second realization of the day? I was taking a nap, as I do whenever humanly possible, and I actually had a nightmare (yes, a nightmare, as in I was horrified and upset during and felt very stressed out when I woke up) about a giant play structure, absolutely FILLED with slides, and all of the kids were going the wrong way on all of them. I was supposed to be monitoring this, but the kids just ignored me, and even said mean things, and I was powerless to stop them. When I woke up, I realized that I have been working in daycare for far, far too long.
These two realizations actually lead me to a third, almost overarching epiphany of the day: I may not have any idea what I’m going out into the world to do, I may be just blindly hoping that the plans I make for my future will somehow come out right, I may be shortly wingin’ it 100%.
But what I do know, for sure, is that it’s probably time for me to be done with college.

Kwaheri,
Sara

PS Okay, so I feel stupid now because I said last time that I was going to say goodbye in Kenyan, but that’s not even a language. As the Google taught my ignorant self, the national languages of Kenya are English and Swahili. My closing for today is the Swahili word for goodbye.