Eulogy for a Break

Let us all remove our hats and observe a moment of silence for the untimely demise of Spring Break. Enjoy this last moment of student-free bliss and look toward the coming weeks with tenacious resolve and perseverance, for there remain only 9 weeks until the carefree days of summer are upon us. April is the cruelest month, for it brings with it Spring Break, a small taste of the happiness to come, only to yank it rudely from our fingers and push us back into the daily grind.

So, school restarts tomorrow. Can you tell I'm not looking forward to it? Perhaps that's to do with me not quite knowing what is coming next in my classes. I have a vague idea of what to do next, but no definite, "This is what we're doing today." I'll figure it out before 9:20 tomorrow morning when the kids walk through my classroom door. In a perfect and ideal world in which I'm someone else, I would have spent the last five days planning the rest of the year and writing out my daily lesson plans to alleviate the stress of the next few weeks. Instead I spent it sleeping, reading Jane Austen, and watching movies. In my defense, we had friends in town for the first half of the week, so I consider myself excused from accomplishing anything, but Wednesday through Friday is completely my fault. I did get bits and pieces of things done for the show (compiling the massive props list and creating a build list), but other school related things were completely ignored.

At times like this, I'm reminded of my 9th grade summer reading assignment, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and wonder if paying attention to that might have helped in my life as a student and now as an adult [do you hear laughter?]. It is possible. I am, however, inclined to think that the timeless words of Dr. Stephen R. Covey would have been more beneficial had I not thought that "paradigm" was pronounced "par-a-dig-um," and indeed, believed it to mean "something beside a digm (whatever that was)," for the entire summer. In any case, the years since have brought me to believe that I'm just not a proactive person.

All of this to say, I didn't get much done. But I did read some Jane Austen.