No movie today

The start of another semester is looming. A few meetings in the next two weeks and then it's showtime on the 29th. It really is a lot like performing because you can't be yourself, you need a syllabus going in - read script- and your critics are plentiful. But I hate to admit I usually enjoy myself. Granted there are always one or two in every class that make my life hell for weeks on end but there are also really sweet, really talented students who make them feel inconsequential. I hate grading, not the process of it just the assigning a letter to a person, defining them in some way, as if I could ever possibly know them well enough to dub them of a certain category, but it's not as bad as having a manager or punching a clock. Hey I can have class outside if I feel like it. But being a teacher is hard. It takes everything out of you. I think all those politicians who continually take funding away from schools should try it out for awhile. It's even harder to see the administration sweating out every penny trying to pull together faculty and classes and lectures, working toward bettering a department that may not exist soon enough. Who needs Humanities right? We just need to pump out those engineers to make us bigger bombs. Never mind that not a day goes by that someone misspells some basic word like sense or you're but no one leaves the country, no one has an interest in other cultures or history or really even thinking on a level that goes beyond what they want on their cheeseburger. But that's the really hard part about teaching, the depths of depression you climb out of just to keep showing up. Just to keep receiving those blank stares and pained looks because you are just getting in the way of what a "real" life entails. I guess as long as people keep asking me to teach I'll do it. I get to talk about books for a living and for people like me that is pretty awesome.

Sorry. No movie today. I have a cold and I'm pretty sure it's stress induced. I spent a lot of last week crying about people making dumb decisions with their life - you know things I can't do anything about. I wish I could only worry about whether or not I wanted ketchup, I really do.