Here's what I did this week!

I started Summer Session B this week - trying to cram in my required courses so that there's not too much to think about when I start my student teaching in September. I am taking Youth Cultures, which sounded fun, and Education and the Aesthetic Experience, which sounded...impenetrable. Apparently, the title also confuses my professor - a crazy Italian phd student: we spent nearly the entire two-hour class period last night discussing the definitions of the words "education" and "experience." If we ever get through "and" and "aesthetic," I'll let you know what the class is about.

Youth Cultures might get fun once we slog through all the Piaget and other old-timey theorists of adolescence (of yore). Or it might remain boring. Even though we have, so far, had the great pleasure of watching both a Katy Perry music video and a clip of High School Musical in class, this class mostly blows it vast potential for awesomeness by serving as a forum for our mumbly old British professor's proofs that he is cool. He namechecks people like Joanna Newsom and talks a lot about Twilight (like, a lot. He even made us read a chapter for homework - much more painful than the theory reading.).

Like I said, I have faith this class will improve: our midterm is to write a one-page paper analyzing a tween show. For now, though, the most fun I've had was writing a "reaction" to our first set of assigned readings. We had about 200 pages to do for the first class (hello, dude - Summer Session!), including an article called "Nation of Wimps," which basically whined and moaned about how Boomer parents are all like this, except, you know, with children and not weimaraners. I have excerpted below because I think what I wrote is kind of funny and I'm really lazy:

And then we get to today’s youth: mollycoddled, weak, depressed, unable to grow up because parents won’t let them. Where is the dashing, roguish youth of our past? Where are there witticisms and their wild schemes? Why do we have to worry more about depression now than masturbation? And why do we keep teaching them in much the same way, even when parenting and childhood are “evolving” at alarming rates?

I put “evolving” in quotations because writer of “Nation of Wimps” seemed under the impression that these changes were RENDING THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY (dun dun dunnnnn). And, sure, I am as annoyed by those “but I’m a hip parent”-parents, or, worse, “but I’m still a kid”-parents, as anyone. And, yes, I do think kids have a much more skewed vision (and version) of reality than I did growing up. They do need to fail and fall down and feel sad every once in a while, but I think most will figure out how to do that eventually, no matter how much hothouse parenting they are subjected to.

It may take longer - stretching into that horrible thing called “extended adolescence,” which is really just “30 year-olds wearing cargo shorts and binge drinking instead of GETTING IT TOGETHER ALREADY BECAUSE OMG YOU ARE 30 AND MY PARENTS HAD 2 KIDS AND REAL JOBS BY THE TIME THEY WERE YOUR AGE.” (Like, does anyone else just flip out every time they see that Verizon commercial that starts out, “Today you went from dude to dad,” because I always yell at my TV that you should probably stop being a “dude” and start being a “responsible man” way before an actual, living, breathing thing pops out of your lover’s womb.) Anywayyyy, most kids, as I think the article pointed out, are aware of being over-parented and don’t like it, so we have to have faith that they will, sooner or later, rebel - i.e., figure out how to fail and grow on their own.

And if kids and childhood are forever changed - if they don’t entirely bounce back - well, maybe that’s okay too. Our society doesn’t attribute the same values to the same life skills as it once did. We still want to see assertiveness and leadership, but we are also in a decade of cooperation, groupthink and mash-up. When the article complains that children are more “herd-minded,” I think, well, why can’t we call it “hive-minded”? The ability to go with the flow and work as a team isn’t a weakness.

And then I go on and on about how it's probably okay that we're not raising, like, Warrior-Kings of Blood Vengeance because that's not really how the world works anymore. And my whole class probably thinks I'm a crazypants annoying person because I bashed out 3 pages on readings that none of the cool kids even did. I really wanted to write a disclaimer at the top to let them know I have a really long commute and forgot to bring anything else to do, but I thought that would probably make me sound even crazier.

The upside to cultivating a persona as "class crazyperson" is that I can yell at the professor about his lameness and probably also talk a lot about Adventure Time - because there is nothing crazier than that show. I'm thinking about writing my midterm about it, so you'll probably see my analysis up here when I once more get too lazy to post original writings.

Already terrible!

I made a resolution about 4 days ago to write in either this blog or my other (or, gasp, possibly both?!) every day for at least a week. The idea was that setting a strict schedule would build into some kind of routine and I would continue to write regularly even after the week had passed. Three days in, I failed.

The terrible part is that I don't even have a good reason - like school or work or hangovers - for why I didn't write yesterday. I am on my week-long break from school (between Summer A and Summer B), I don't have any freelance things due for another week and a half, and I'm pretty much just sleeping and reading the newspaper all the time. For the first few days of this, I was like, "Look, world, this is my vacation week. I have had a stressful summer, and I deserve not to worry about things for three freakin' days." But seriously, self, it's been long enough.

The above stress-inducers/time-suckers have made it really hard to write, well, kind of all year (with the exception of hangovers. I am now so boring and workyworky that I rarely drink more than one beer). My old, "real" job may have sucked, and I don't regret leaving it for school AT ALL, but man, it sure made weekends easier. I could just leave stuff on my desk and not think about it, or care, for days. Now, there is ALWAYS something looming over me: Freelance stuff has been coming in steadily (which is awesome - I didn't think I would get any work, really), I am working part-time in an actual office-y building, and, except for this week, I have homework to think about (even though it's summer, and we all know, deep in our hearts, that summer class is - or is supposed to be - a joke). Oh, and there's also the little matter of planning an entire semester's worth of English classes for the 9th graders that I'm getting this September.

Wahwahwah - right? I've gotta stop making excuses. I mean, I love writing - why do I not do it more? Why can't I make time for it, when I make plenty of time for pfutzing around on the Internet and talking to my dog? I've had an idea for a novel bouncing around my skull for at least a year, but aside from the general plot points, all I've scratched out is a character sketch for a dad with an ill-conceived and nefarious-looking mustache. Surely, I can do better.

Hey!

Hey! Know what's a mostly bad decision? Starting a blog and then NEVER writing in it! Like, EVER! I mean, look at that last entry: a field trip? Man, I ain't been on no stinking field trips in months!

But don't worry, I'm still doing stupid things - like moving out of my beloved Park Slope. Nay, not just Park Slope, but all of Brooklyn. In fact, I moved out of the entire state of NY - the Empire State! I fear for my head when the Emperor (Jay-Z the Beneficent) finds out.

Yes, I am now an official resident of New Jersey, if you count postal addresses as official residencies. I don’t know, I “officially” change my address at least once a year through usps.gov, and aside from charging me a dollar for “verification” costs (aka, "the USPS is broke, please give us money" costs), I don’t think they really do anything to check how official I am. So if I didn’t mind my Shape magazine subscriptions going to complete strangers, I could probably be a "verified" resident of anywhere. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Done - I just hope the presidential daughters don't walk off with my mail-ordered camping sandals. (They're probably too cool for that.)

So, yeah - moving has apparently turned me into the kind of major, major nerd who wears Tevas in public - not like, base camp public, but suburban half-price sushi restaurant public. And I eat at suburban half-price sushi places located in NJ strip malls. AND I LIKE IT.

How did this happen?

Well, the half-price sushi happened because it's awesome and delicious. That's all you need to know there. The Tevas and granola-making and showing up to class as the smelly kid with a bike seat hanging out of her backpack? I think it's a semi-subconscious anti-NJ rebellion.

Don't get me wrong: there is nothing inherently bad about NJ. It smells much better than you might think, flora and fauna abound, and there is a real-live Target Superstore. Heaven, no?

But, you see, I am not of NJ. I did not grow up in a subdivision. I do not quite understand how the Turnpike works. I like walking places. Rude people stress me out. Thus, living in a big house in a neighborhood with a lot of other big houses that all look the same, where people are terrible drivers who honk at you for STOPPING AT RED LIGHTS! JEEZ! sometimes makes me want to hide in a damp cave until summer is over.

Damp caves, however, are bad for the skin and worse for relationships (coming in at a close second to NY Bar Review), and so I do the next best thing. I slowly convert to hippie-dom. I do yoga and stand around outside and buy giant tubs of organic yogurt (BaNilla flavored! So good! So funny!). Maybe if I drape enough daisy chains over my head, I can pretend I am in Vermont. Or Park Slope.

First Field Trip

First, the good news: there hasn't been any more crying. I think the boys mostly like me now. They still don't listen to me, but they like me - it's a start.

The bad news: I had my first field trip on Friday - the Friday that happened to be the last day of school before spring break.

Really, it wasn't SO terrible. The kids were terrible, but the experience was kind of fun, once I figured out what we were doing.

I've been struggling quite a bit this semester with the fact that no one at my school ever tells me anything. Really, ANYTHING. That's just how it is. I didn't know we were going on a field trip until the principal mentioned it yesterday at assembly (oh, and that assembly? I only knew about it because last semester's student teacher - who does not work at this school anymore - told me about it). I didn't know what time we were leaving for said trip - and nearly pulled my hair out when train traffic added 40 extra minutes to my commute this morning (don't worry - we didn't leave until 10:30). I didn't even know where we were going today until we got there.

But whatever, we made it, right?

In fact, our trek from school to the subway to the Hayden Planetarium (woo! shout-out to Neil DeGrasse Tyson - coolest astrophysicist ever!) was so incredibly efficient, even with 100 or so screaming, last-day-of-school-before-spring-break, losing-their-minds-over-finally-getting-to-be-coed 8th graders, that we made it there about an hour before our official entrance time. Do not ask me how taking 100 people on a subway anywhere can be efficient; coming from my six-train commute this morning, I was flabbergasted.

The early arrival worked out, though! No worries! because we had not technically scheduled in a lunchtime for the students! So while we stood around in the beautiful 40 degree spring weather, waiting to be let in, we got to eat lunch. YAY.

I want to take a moment here to point out that many of my students purchased their "lunches" from bodegas and refreshment stands that we passed on our voyage. These lunches consisted largely of chips and candy, and they all seemed perfectly satisfied by these things. I am so glad that we usually force them to eat cafeteria lunch.

After lunch, we managed to wheedle our way inside a little early. The students were supposed to be doing a worksheet that the science teacher had given them. It was full of questions about the exhibit and the universe and whatnot and seemed, really, like an excellent way to help them pass the time without getting into too much trouble.

I think the first question threw them off, though: "What does the sphere in the middle of the room represent?"

Here's the thing about planetariums (planetaria?): There are a lot of spheres hanging around in there. And here's the thing about the super-awesome Hayden Planetarium: It's not really a "room," as in, an obviously enclosed space with four walls and a ceiling and floor and an easily-recognized "center." It is a wide open atrium-type space with a big spiraling ramp that takes you through a few levels of space knowledge. So finding the sphere in the center, and then finding the helpful sign that tells you what it's supposed to represent, takes a little more legwork than 8th graders on a field trip are willing to put in.

I wasn't too hung-up on this issue, though, because I had a much bigger problem on my hands: three of my boys, who had been whining and complaining about the field trip (?!?! ingrates!) since we started, had decided that wandering around the frozen tundra of the upper west side would be more enjoyable than seeing a sweet, sweet planetarium movie about stars. In other words, we had wannabe fugitives.

I spent the entire lunch period trying to convince these three to stand within a 20 foot radius of their group - much harder than it sounds, especially when you're me and your students are six-foot-tall teenage boys who are having grouchy days.

Once we got inside, and the entire planetarium was open to exploration, such wrangling became quite a bit harder. So then, in frustration and at a loss (did I mention that my supervising teacher had disappeared halfway between the school and the museum? She got off the train with two of our boys at 86th St. and met back up with us much later) and maybe kind of attempting to seem cool, I made a mistake. A pretty big one: I pulled them aside, and I explained to them that, while I HUGELY PREFERRED that they stay with their group, if they did manage to get themselves lost, they should know that we were leaving at 1:00, and they needed to be back on the train with us.

STUPID.

Of course, they took this as license to not only try to run as far away as possible, but to do it while acting as foolish as possible (i.e., running right past our group, yelling and laughing, while the rest of us waited to go into the star movie). Never try to get an 8th grader to be sneaky. I should have known this - they are always trying to be sneaky in class, with a success rate of about .017%. Some of the other teachers managed to rope them in, after which they immediately snitched on me. Serves me right, and all the other teachers were so flustered there was no lasting harm done (I hope. I guess we'll see when I get back from spring break).

Meanwhile, the star movie happened. Our kids screamed and laughed and ate their poor forgotten lunches throughout. We left right after.

We were supposed to have stayed at the museum for an extra hour or so after the movie, but when the classes of second graders at the movie behaved better than our kids (they really did), the teachers in charge decided enough was enough.

A lot of the kids - mostly girls - were upset about the early departure. They were worried about not finishing their worksheets. One even pointed out to me that no one had told them they couldn't eat in the movie. True enough. We forget sometimes that kids (and six feet tall or not, these students are kids) don't know things that we take for granted. If there was no announcement before the movie that specifically said, "Do not eat your chip-lunch during the show," they probably would have saved it, but without that warning, why not multitask?

I think if a smaller group had behaved exactly the same, they could have stayed. Having 25 misbehaving kids wandering around is a lot more manageable than 100. Even with a high teacher : student ratio (we had 7 or 8 adults, if you count me), somewhere around 60 or 70 students, you start exceeding some magical cosmic number, and control goes out the window. I only put myself in charge of three students (three highly deviant runaways, but only three), and with so many of their classmates running around, looking lost, asking for help and causing trouble, I had a heck of a time just keeping track of the trio. Other teachers had as many as 10 or 15 to watch at once.

Craziness aside, like I said, it was fun. I like the planetarium, no matter how much my kids complain, and it was nice to see them outside of class for a day, without my co-op being scary and hovering over us. I also learned some valuable lessons about the eating habits of eighth graders, average land speed of the New York 14-year-old, and why we don't put normally-separated, single-gender classes of eighth graders together in a dark room. Now I know.

Oh, so THIS is when the crying starts

In my first official student teaching class (aka "talk about your feelings in the evening when you leave student teaching" class), our professor spent a lot of time describing just how much of our personal time this semester would be spent weeping. She did this very cheerily, splicing in a lot of giggles and many instances of the phrase "hot mess," so I didn't give much credit to what she said.

I am not a crier. At least, not for good reasons, like "he was mean to me." I cry at slow motion sports montages and the end of What Not to Wear and occasionally at weddings. I do not just come home at the end of a long day and "have a good cry." I have a beer. And that's that - until today.

Today, I feel like I might go home and cry. The boys were not just bad - they were EVIL. It started in math class. I foolishly - SO FOOLISHLY - decided to go observe them away from the iron grip of my cooperating teacher. I'd heard they were particularly bad in this class, and my coop had absolutely nothing nice to say about the math teach's classroom management capabilities. So I took my little observation notebook, sat down, and watched them LOSE THEIR DAMN MINDS.

Boys were yelling across the classroom, drumming, screaming, walking around, shooting hoops with the recycling, leaving class, smacking each other...a very different show from what they put on in my coop's class. Eventually, it got so bad, I felt the need to jump in - my second misstep. I could control one at a time, but no more, and I don't think that approach really earned me any respect from the 15 other kids who continued to run around screaming while I had serious chats with their classmate.

I asked one of the little devils straight up, "What is the deal with this class? Why are you being SO BAD?" He said, "She's not strict enough. We don't respect her." Well. Okay. Now I know what the problem is, but how do I fix it? Respect isn't something that I automatically command. I am young and inexperienced and small and today when I was shoving boys around, yeah, I bossed them, but I was shaking while I did it.

I guess I carried some of the sheen of utter failure from that class back to my coop's room. The same class was in there - totally well-behaved and silent for her, but every time she stepped out of the room or turned her back, it was back to the old tricks. I am proud to say that it did not get as crazy as the math room - meaning I fall somewhere between awesome and horrible on the classroom management scale, but there were three that brought it to the brink.

Somehow, these three (particular troublemakers in a class full of them) got it into their heads that I was tattling on them. Because I have nothing better to do with my time than write down everything little crappy thing they do and show it to my coop, the enforcer. They think my student teaching notebook is my ledger of offenses. I have no idea how this happened. None of them got in trouble when we came back to the class of reason and silence. Even when my coop pressed me for the gossip of the other room, I didn't name names (except to tell her the 3 that had been good, and the one that had gone missing). So now I am "the snitch" - not the most respectful thing to call your student teacher.

Every time I had to tell someone to stop talking or get to work, the three troubles would say, "You'd better do it, before she tattles on you!" And I let it get to me. I mean, what do you do in that situation? Ignore it? Maybe if you're their classmate, but a teacher can't let them call her those things, right? Right? It really hurt my feelings. I've been with them for 2.5 weeks, and I've been pretty cool with them, I thought. I'm not weak, I try not to be too tough with them or yell at them for no reason, I help them when they ask. It was a terrible shock to realize that those things - in the moment at least - did not matter to them. I felt transported back to my own terrible middle school - just feeling so terribly awkward and judged and unliked for no reason that I could really pinpoint. They made me feel ugly and small and dumb even when I thought I was so over that. And I felt like crying.

If anyone reads this, I know what they'll say - it takes time to build respect, you can't win them all over, 8th graders are demented, you can't let them get to you, blahblahblah. I know, and I'm trying to shake it off. It's hard, though, to have a first day of failure at the hands of people you've invested yourself in. I know there are more to come, and I hope I'll get a little hardened.

Mostly AWESOME

It took 2 doctor's visits (TB test), 2 trips to the office of teacher education (a bad bad place) and a little jaunt to the real, live NYC Department of Education building, but I finally managed to sneak myself into a real live classroom. Woo!

Week three of student teaching starts tomorrow, which means I've spent many of my waking hours the past two weeks sitting in a room full of 8th grade boys. That's right - all boys. Two classes' worth of them, with 14 more being added (transfers from the formerly-coed class) some time in the next few weeks. A lot of farting happens, but, other than that, it's been surprisingly fun.

So far, I've been stuck in observation mode, only really interacting with the boys when they have individual work to do - floating around to help them out on essays and encourage them to actually read their books, etc. My cooperating teacher is incredible, but I think she may be just a little bit of a control freak. That's great for keeping the class in line, not so much for me getting to teach.

Of course, I'm sure she knows exactly what she's doing - she's had student teachers in her classroom every semester for at least 2 years running. And judging by the way the students ABSOLUTELY LOSE THEIR MINDS every time she steps out of the classroom, I probably need to spend a little more time watching her methods and gaining their respect before I'm truly left alone with them.

Right now, her foot crossing the classroom threshold is like an on/off switch. Even if she's still visible through the doorway, if she's outside the room it turns into crazy town in there. Kids talk right through me when I'm standing in front of them saying "look at me, hey hey HEY." There's dancing, singing, foul language, and, for whatever reason, a lot of head-slapping. That's their thing - always touching each others' heads.

There are some that listen to me. And I already have my favorites, which I know is wrong, but a couple of these kids are so adorable, I can't help having a little soft spot for them, trouble-makers or not.

I'm still learning names. The troublemakers are easy, because they're always getting yelled at, but the good ones, the ones I should know so I can thank them for not being insane, they're a little harder. I write their names (spelled phonetically because they don't seem to have an attendance sheet here? wha?) and some descriptions in my little notebook whenever I learn a new one, and am kind of living in fear that someone will pick up the notebook and read things like "[redacted] - manface, evil eyebrows." It would be like Harriet the Spy only SO MUCH WORSE.

We wrap up our current unit next week, then there's mid-winter break (school is awesome! break woo!), then we start Shakespeare, and, I hope, I start teaching. Wish me luck.

Autobiography part a million

A little secret about teacher school: you spend A LOT of time talking and thinking and writing and talking more about YOURSELF. Not about school or students or teaching - just you.

I have a "teaching autobiography" due tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure what that is. I read two articles that were about the importance of writing teaching autobiographies, but neither really bothered to go into the mechanics of one. From what I can gather, you pretty much just spill your guts about EVERYTHING that might affect how you teach - your background, beliefs, political leanings, earliest learning and teaching experiences, inspirations, anti-inspirations, ETC.

Because my poor computer is full to the point of lethargy these days, I have decided to write said autobiography here and allow the internets to worry about saving it. I think I am going to present it as a mobile, so if it looks a little piecey, just imagine it swirling around with lots of string and pretty paper. oooooh! right?

Where I'm coming from:
A Mainer who grew up in the South.
White, middle-class family that seriously values education.
Public school until high school. I loved school until 7th grade.
Middle school sucked. More on that later.
Then there was high school. I went to Brookstone School: A College Preparatory School for Boys and Girls. It was ridiculous - populated by the landed gentry of the south - but an incredible educational experience. It was small and challenging and the teachers there cared whether you learned something and whether you were happy doing it. My freshman year of college was EASY compared to my senior year of high school. We had no classroom management. No discipline - it just didn't seem necessary (until my junior year there was Brookstone Hunt Club that asked kids to bring their guns to school). We were given a lot of freedom and frequently were treated like responsible adults - kind of college-lite. Going there was probably the best thing, life-course-changing-wise, that has ever happened to me.
I'm a Liberal and a sociology major. I'm sure that sort of thing will affect my classroom approach.
I'm impatient but working on it.
Thanks to the Brookstone experience (and my parents), I grew up very sheltered. I realize this. The types of things that some of my kids will be going through will probably blow my little mind. We'll see.

Why am I here?
This one is messy.

Nieto writes that many excellent teachers are also activists. I have felt, for much of my life, like an activist without a cause. I wanted to do good, to impact the world for the better, but have never really found what felt like the right channel for me to do so. I've been a tutor, a Habitat for Humanity builder, a 4H member, a visitor to various old folks' homes, a camp counselor - and I liked all those things and thought that they were the right thing to do at the time, but they didn't feel like my LIFE. A once-a-week meeting, no matter how anticipated or successful, is not a CAUSE. It is just a step.
A step to what? Why did I do those things? I guess the greater impetus, and this is going to sound dumb, was to just BE GOOD - to make life a little bit better or easier or happier for those who could use the help. A lot of what I did happened to be (and happens to be) education-focused because that's what I'm good at - that's what I have to offer.

There are other reasons why I'm here. I cried every day on the way to middle school because I hated it and felt so alone and bored and just weird because that's how middle school makes you feel. Middle school should not be a purgatory - it's hard enough being thirteen. Kids that age need teachers - note baby-sitters - who care about them and push them and realize that they are in a weird life place. I think I can do that.

I love school. There is no place I'd rather be, and I want others to feel that way.

I want to be a TC in particular because it seems very aware of and invested in its community. I wanted - needed - to go somewhere that would adequately train me to teach where good teachers are most needed.

What I want to be
I have spent a ridiculous number of hours trying to plot my "Teacher Persona" for the classroom. Will I be tough? Kind? Funny? Scary? Crazy? Will I be able to control it at all? I don't know. But I do have some models.
My mom is a first grade teacher. She is kind and patient and very good at keeping a sense of humor.
I want to make myself as warm and inviting as Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz. She made those of us in her writing class last semester feel like we were her favorite, smartest, most special class ever. It was incredible and so encouraging.
I want to be sharp and well-traveled and a little bit kooky like Mrs. Khazaeli, my 9th grade English teacher. She told me to be a writer, and she had us all convinced that she could do witchcraft.
I want to have the energy of Mr. Davis, my history teacher, and Mr. East, another English teacher. It was impossible not to be excited in their classes.
I want to be as lovable and terrifying a the same time as Mrs. Livengood, my European history teacher. I think it would help to be 6 feet tall and built like a linebacker with flaming red hair. And be a genius. And have incredibly high expectations. And be like a mom (a gossipy one) to everyone.
And even before I knew I wanted to be a teacher, I knew I wanted to be like Kate Slevin, my college adviser. She was smart and funny and dry and no-nonsense, and she could have been so intimidating, but instead, she was the only college professor whose class I ever willfully spoke in. She had a way of drawing me out. I still don't know how she did it, but she helped me shine. I need to learn that trick.

I had a whole other section planned out for what I don't want to be, but I decided not to dwell on the negative because I certainly don't want to be that.

Moving forward
I start student teaching tomorrow. My billion questions are sure to multiple as soon as I get int o the classroom. For now, I'm just going to do my best, take lots of notes, listen to anyone who will take the time to talk to me (including students), and try to build a little bit more of myself as a teacher every day.

A whole new year in which to make bad decisions! Yay!

I definitely finished out the old year and jumped right into the new in the true spirit of this blog: I went to my parents' house and did not write a thing for close to a month.

A month! I don't even know if I know how to write anymore. What is this thing I am banging on with my fingers? A keyboard? What IS that?

Instead of writing, I ate. And ate and ate and ate meat and bread and banana pudding and candy and chicken salad and cheese, all topped off with beer, wine and eggnog. Bad decisions, to be sure. I think I gave myself gout. I definitely gave myself a stomachache, and, like a truly crazy person, refused to learn from my gourmet mistakes, instead making new ones every day.

Even on the ride home - a bad decision all on its own, for reasons I will describe shortly - I could not tame the eating beast that I had cultivated throughout my ill-deserved vacation. We ate at Sonic (bacon cheeseburger AND chocolate cream pie shake), then we ate at Wendy's, then we ate beef jerky and sour patch kids and Pepsi. And we didn't move for 20 hours.

Yes, twenty. Being the incredibly wise and forward-thinking people that we are, we (Gerard, the dog and I) decided about half-way through our trip that we were not going to stop in DC, as planned, but, instead, would drive all the way to New Jersey in one crazy road adventure.

This was stupid on two, maybe three, counts:
1) Not stopping in DC meant we would not get to see the lovely Alejandro, who I had just called the day before to drop the last-minute bomb that we would be invading his house. I had to call him back and even-more-last-minute cancel, probably ruining his plans for the evening and being an all-around terrible friend.

2) Twenty hours is long and exhausting for even the most well-rested and alert of drivers. We were not well-rested and alert. We had gone to a wine-tasting/ridiculous-fest with my family the night before and were driving on 6.5 hours of sleep and the slowly dissipating remnants of 6 glasses of wine in our bellies.

3) Snow happened. AGAIN. "The blizzard of '09" struck the night before I was supposed to ship out of New Jersey to get home, and even after having to shovel myself out of a driveway and make my first attempt at snow-driving alone, I did not learn to plan my travel around the weather. Just after passing DC (where we could have stopped!) on the drive home, the snow showers started up. We had to make he rest of the trip puttering along below the speed limit, unable to see more than a few feet in front of us.

We made it home (well, to NJ) at 3:45 AM.

We are now back in Brooklyn, where our new year will really get up and running. School starts back in a few days (Monday for Gerard, the next week for me), I go back to the admissions office tomorrow, I have faith that one day I will actually get assigned to teach a Kaplan class, and the great "stop Lauren from eating so much" experiment will begin. I feel that this year will give me much to write about, especially once I begin my student teaching in February. Stay tuned.