raise your hand

if you are tired today, so very tired and cranky, and this is taking you by surprise because you did not anticipate feeling this way with only two! weeks! left in the semester and with four of five classes' worth of essays graded, and with the weekend of Parks and Rec-watching and grading-at-Panera,

but it is Monday, and during the morning class you had to ask one kid to put away his phone, even though in the prior fourteen weeks of the semester you have indicated just how fucking irritating you find this, and then one student who is barely holding on by his fingernails anyway didn't show up, thereby not turning in his end-of-the-semester grammar test and missing his fifty-point material spotcheck--it is not important that you know what these things mean, exactly, just that they are worth 150 possible points--

and instead that student stood in your office doorway after class and stared at you, uncomprehending, until finally you said, Did you need to talk to me about something?, and then, tooth by tooth, you pulled it out of the kid, that he didn't do the grammar test, that he wanted to make up the work he just missed because he couldn't get out of bed fifty minutes earlier, and in these five minutes, even though you know that the kid is just a typical freshman, so fearful of the news he's expecting--You are probably going to fail this course--that he just goes mute,

and while you know that your job is to recognize this failure and defeat and shame in the kid, and show him humanity, some not-unsmall part of you wants to make him at least work for it, not ask him questions but instead stare at him until he stammers that he'd like to make up the spotcheck and oh no he didn't do the test, what test?, and while you know this is not effective teaching,

today you are suddenly and totally tired of all of it, and you know it's not this kid's fault, or the morning class's fault, or anyone's fault, but you suddenly want to hit your keyboard until it breaks into a million, satisfying, tiny little pieces,

but instead you take a deep breath, and another,

and give the end-of-the-semester talk, just like you have to so many other students, and you don't even think about the good ones right now, you don't think about the one who, last week, stuck around to talk about David Foster Wallace and reading, instead, you have to focus on talking to the ones who don't do their work, ever, and then try to talk to you during your lunch hour about Is there any way I can still get an A in this class? and you try not to laugh soup out of your face in response to this question, and most days you are not this tired of it all,

but today you are, you are, and life goes on, but, still, today, raise your hand, raise your hand.










p.s. when you're done with this, go take a walk! You will discover ducklings, and this will cheer you.