I cried today.

Today was weird. I had to present a lesson on Shakespearian sonnets and, while I am not a literature major, I always get a little flustered at the thought of teaching someone material on what I don't feel I have mastery of. I like to write. That's my thing. I know grammar rules are weird and are consistently broken and whatnot but I like to write and I want to teach students how to do that. But it's English for Pete's sake, I have to teach them about the final products of investing in WRITING!

So Shakespeare it was.

I studied, I paraphrased ("Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" and felt SUPEr confident of what I was going to teach.

Lo and behold, it worked. I TAUGHT THEM SHAKESPEARE!!! They got to the third quatrain and were like "You mean, she's going to live forever in his POETRY!? That's SO COOL!!"

I was feeling confident and had them working in pairs on these questions they had to respond to. Then I realized I had to teach another poem. FUCK~ It's about the rhythm of poetry and learning to identify how the sound plays a big part of the "message" of the poem.

Well, I completely forgot to go over the literary terms for that piece of poetry. OMG! I get to the end of the poem and I realize I FORGOT a HUGE step. I stare at the book and realize that it's going to be a total disaster to try to teach them something in literally like 5 minutes. Fuck.

I pause, I stutter step and close my book and say "you know what? We'll just go over this Thursday. Let me explain your homework.

Mother fucker.

Then the kids just started talking and getting ready to leave and, damn. They are talking LOUDLY.

So I, ahem, speak-at the top of my lungs-"DO! NOT! ASK! ME! TO! CLARIFY! YOUR HOMEWORKBECAUSEIAMTRYINGTODOTHATAND YOU! ARE! TALKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY DO YOU HAVE YOUR BACKPACKS ON?????!!!!!!"

UGH.

I just had to sit down at my desk and let them "marinate in their silence" as I described it earlier.

So for two minutes, they sat. in their own silence.

And when they left, I cried.

I was so pissed off at them, at myself, at just the whole transition.

They say that it gets better.

I hope so. I don't feel like paying back $50k in lost hope. Not at all.