Mid-winter Slump

This February has been especially rough on me and I feel as if I'm caught in some sort of trap. Motivation is low, creativity is nonexistent ... I find myself counting down the minutes until I can curl up in my warm bed and fall asleep for the night.

While this is doing wonders for the amount of time my brain is getting to reboot every night, its not doing much for this blog.

It doesn't help that I'm feeling more frustrated than inspired at work, and I don't want to constantly complain about the incredibly crazy situations that make up my day-to-day life ... Then my readership (of two people?) will really go down! I just feel like whenever things seem to be moving in the right direction, something has to ruin everything.

• A productive lab day for all of my classes is sabotaged (at least in my mind) by someone stealing my supplies.
• A seemingly "easy" class of simple note-taking becomes a shouting match between two girls when one none-too-kindly requests that the other "shut up."
• A student recites my written words from past discipline referrals and even a conference questionnaire in front of his peers ... Announcing that I must be passive-aggressive for good measure.
• Students give up if they feel overwhelmed (challenged?) by an assignment and then blame me for not "helping them."

I don't know if this winter weather is pulling everyone down, or if I'm all alone in having a really crappy month.

It just stinks that all these little storm clouds fill my thoughts overshadow the good things that are currently happening, too ...

Maybe next month.

Blizzard

No ... Thankfully not the type that is made of feet of cold, unyielding snow ... But rather the edible Dairy Queen variety.

I'm not sure if it's because Valentine's Day is tomorrow, or because my husband is just awesome (it's probably because he's just awesome) ... But I'll be getting a delicious ice-cream treat when he returns home any moment now. Chocolate chip cookie dough. Yum!

And to think, all it took was a simple, "Do you know what you should do after we clean up from dinner?"

And off he went.

I'm a lucky, lucky girl. :)

If only the rest of my week (especially the parts where I am working) could go as wonderfully as this!

Snap Judgements

Although I'm pretty level-headed and logical, there are times at school when I just act out of pure frustration or emotion. For some reason, students find it entertaining to just wander into my classroom while on their way someplace else ... And I all-too-enthusiastically shoo them away.

The other day, while sitting at my desk during study hall, one of my usual hall wanderers came into the room and made quite a scene. He high-fived a student in the room, shouted out greetings to all who could hear, generally strutted like a peacock trying to impress a mate. I was just about to tell him to "move along" when he walked farther into the room, approaching my desk. While looking everyplace else but at me, he mumbled, in a much quieter voice than I have ever heard him use: "Miss? Can you help me with that science assignment from the other day?"

Shocked that he wasn't just entering my room for no reason other than to cause a commotion, I picked my jaw up from off of the floor and quickly agreed to help him out before he was off to locate the tricky paper.

Looking back at this particular situation, I'm so glad that I did not act on my initial inclinations. Thankfully, I didn't shout out something along the lines of: "Jason! Get to class or I'm writing you up for disrupting my study hall!" Not only would this have escalated an otherwise harmless situation, it would have made me feel like a complete idiot for missing one of the most worthwhile opportunities that my job provides ... Working one on one with a student and actually getting somewhere.

On the flip side, during a different study hall, I had a student tell me that he didn't like me when he first came into my classroom: "I thought that you were really serious and smart ... That you would think I was stupid if I didn't understand something," he commented honestly.

"But I'm not like that," I shrugged.

"No! You're not that way at all ... You're very patient and helpful. I guess it's like that saying you shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

You know, there is something to be said for letting a situation (or a working relationship) unfold before arriving at a definitive conclusion. Sometimes we need a little time to see the truth of the moment shine through.

I'm a scientist at heart. I should have that down by now.