The Aliens [Will Still] Be There

Wow, it's the Thursday before school starts for teachers. This is the week that television ads for back to school shopping, places like Office Depot, and the word "back pack" used to make me froth at the mouth.

*shudders*

Next week is pre-planning which actually means a whole week of "OMG.. meetings!" I've always wondered if the business world felt the same way -- I know that I have been at meetings for church where I thought to myself: "I don't think Moses needed this long. He had those ten rules, and then everyone was out of there!"

I have never understood meetings that seem to be for the sake of saying "we've met. Now let me go and do what I was gonna do anyway."

*shrugs*

The first day of pre-planning [maybe the first two hours] is like the first day of school for students -- you're happy to see your friends, you're happy to have a schedule after a summer of freedom, and you're in air-conditioning paid for by somebody else.

Then.

Then.

Reality sets in...

The students are coming
The students are coming

and

you get this little bitty ache in the pit of your stomach -- it's the combo platter of fear, anxiety, dread, and "I've got to get up in the dark again" -- all wrapped up in an enchilada... an enchilada that can't be digested with Diet Coke and lots of salsa. It stays and stays and stays....

Then, there are the meetings -- the re-reading of the teacher's handbook (out loud in some places), the new "rules" for the year, and then the dreaded meetings for the sake of meetings where you sit under the tutelage of someone who has gone to some educational symposium lead by specialists who haven't taught for decades who will tell you HOW to do it better cause you really do HOOVER at it -- and then ...

You get packets of handouts with agendas, and procedures, and then the DREADED new evaluation model for teacher observations. This year's evaluation model is, of course, bigger and meaner and longer and more convoluted than the last.

That's when I used to look to the sky and say, "Beam me up, Scotty, the aliens are still here."

BUT

The good news is that -- this year -- for the first time in fifty years, I will not be going back to school.

Instead.

I will be ...... doing something, I'm sure.

PS. I will miss the office supplies. That used to be my favorite part of back to school -- NEW PENS!! Oh look --- Sharpies! Post it Notes! Rolls of cellephone tape! Big Gem clips....

Eh. Once a nerd, always a nerd --- it's genetic and was an occupational hazard.