One more day and I'm feeling...pretty good, actually.

Not exhausted, not burnt out, not on the verge of finding a new profession.  Today wasn't too bad for a second-to-last day.  The kids were actually pretty well behaved.  My most difficult student all year was my most helpful student today.  He really surprised me when he and a few of his friends approached a tiny, shy, nerdy kid who was sitting in the bleachers crying because he didn't have enough stamps (our "currency" for the year) to participate in any of the fun activities we had planned for the day.  They all politely asked him if he wanted to walk around with them since he didn't have any stamps.  He declined, and they proceeded to offer him to use some of their stamps to play the games.  I think it made his day.  He ran off the bleachers with lots of stamps ready to be used on those simple, mindless games that middle schoolers just love for some reason.  Life was good back then.

It's hard to believe tomorrow is the last day of my first year of teaching.  At times, the year went by so slowly, but now it seems it all went by too fast.  Sitting here on my apartment deck smoking my pipe, I'm thinking of how I'm going to spend the summer once it finally comes.  I've just realized that I'm going to get bored really quickly.  I got home at four today, which is very early, and I was bored by eight.  What's going to happen when I have all day every day open and have to find something to do (with relatively little money)?  I really am going to miss my kids.  I'm going to miss the great relationships I formed with my students, the nightly search for interesting math and science activities for the next day, the kid who talks to me about the bluegrass gigs he plays at, and the time I get to spend making kids actually like to learn.  I'm also going to miss all of the senseless little arguments, the kids who annoy me every day, the dead tired mornings where I really don't want to go to school.

This kind of talk makes me realize that I did a pretty good job choosing a profession.  I might not be in the perfect profession (and don't know if that exists for me), but if I'm going to miss the work I do during my time off, that's not bad at all.  Bring on another year.