Stress

The green numerals of my alarm clocked glared back at my sleepless eyes a few nights ago, mocking me as I watched my few hours of sleep wither away in the early morning hours. It was 1:30, and despite a 13 hour work day and little sleep the previous night, I could not coax myself into blissful rest. I though I had perhaps drunk a cup of caffeinated tea that evening, but I realized in my hour listening to the ceiling fan squeak that it was not. Then I thought I had drifted off watching TV. I finally drifted off as I searched my brain for reasons I could not sleep.

The next night, the same thing happened. As I lay bewildered, the answer came to me. Stress. Anxiety. I can't sleep when my mind is full of endless lists of things I need to do, and more important, the consequence of failure to do those things. Anyway, it was a lot to do. Still is.

I'm tend to put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel that the success or failure of whatever project rests on my shoulders, and mine alone. Even with the play, I feel that I am somehow responsible for my cast's failure to be off book when I asked them too, or their shortcomings as actors. I take the responsibility of that onto myself, and it drives me insane.

I think I've said this before, as I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I feel like I'm playing catch up all the time. As a teacher, director, designer, adult, I'm have to learn as I go along, and as a result, things get dropped, messed up, forgotten. I'm getting very frustrated with it. It doesn't help that I daily go into work and feel completely inadequate. It seems like I have a student every day who seems to make it their personal goal to make me feel like a puddle of mud by the end of the period.

I'm getting tired of hearing, "this class is boring," and "I hate this class right now," and "Miss, you're being stupid." Do they not realize that I have feelings too, and that I'm quite aware that I suck at my job without them reminding me with every snide remark and rolled eye aimed in my direction? I get the feeling that most teachers wouldn't put up with that, but I don't know what options I have. No one told me.

I can't wait until summer.

The First Referral

I had to write a guy up Thursday. It took a week and a half of teaching. That's probably not a good thing. I found myself wondering what I'd done wrong as far as classroom control goes? He and I had a discussion earlier in the class period about his grade (which is not good to say the least, although I haven't actually calculated it yet). In hindsight, I probably should have drawn the line and said I wasn't discussing it. Frankly, I don't know what else he was expecting from his performance. What gets me is that he didn't even try. Last week he told me that he didn't really want to be in my class in the first place, something about not wanting to be an actor. I told him that I wasn't expecting amazing performances, and all he had to do in my class to pass it was try. Just try, that's all I want. He said he wasn't smart enough to memorize his lines. I told him he' s selling himself short, and that he has potential to do whatever he wants.

On Thursday he walked out of my class without permission. What else was I supposed to do?

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In other news, I've blown my monthly quota out of the water. I'm pretty excited about that. Maybe my annual average will be 6 posts a month. It's just a product of actually having something to write about for the first time in a long time. Good times.