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2001-10-04 - 6:05 p.m. I am eating mini chocolate donuts and drinking a glass of milk. This can only mean one thing: I'm feeling depressed. It's not like I never pause and look longingly at the mini chocolate (okay, mini powdered sugar as well) donuts, but I usually give myself a pep talk and pass them on by. Today after work I stopped and got them because "I deserve it." Seriously, never go on a diet because from then on you will have a messed up relationship with food. Before I went on a diet a few years back, I was a happy and fun person who loved to eat and ate whatever I wanted. After my diet, I am a person who eats whatever I want and feel guilty about it, and eats crap when I am feeling down. Not good. I weighed myself this morning and my weight is back down, so at least that is good. Anyway, back to my depression. I am just SO SO SO SO stressed out. Seventh period is also going badly. I hate ending the day that way. I told them they could sit where they want instead of the seating chart because with that seating chart there are already problems. Hoping then I could use the threat of a seating chart against them. I think I made a mistake but who knows. I feel like Ms. Evil Teacher instead of Ms. Boombastic with those guys. I am actually pretty nice, which might be the problem. I hate feeling like the whole class is being bad. It's so much easier when just one is so you can have a little talk with them or make them leave or something. When they are all being bad there isn't much choice. I guess I could try the whole punish the whole class by making them all stay after or something, but I really hate doing that and a lot of them catch busses so am not sure if that is an option. Relatively speaking I did have a good day, it is just the piles of grading that I am working on. I am not pleased. Luckily some other teachers are selling out too and are not doing the 8-4 thing either. I saw another teacher at the store and told him how stressed I was and he agreed he had to stop the 8-4 thing as it is really only punishing us. I felt a little better. The play the sophomores are reading is a stupid play and a waste of time. I wish that I had not decided to read it. They don't like it. The whole reason was I thought it would be fun to read a play. I'm glad tomorrow is the last day we will be reading that stupid thing. We had to put it off for awhile because we were working on other stuff and I almost considered forgetting it completely and pretending it slipped my mind. Which is worse, having the kids think you are looney or sitting through a boring play for over two periods? Hmm. The seniors have been happy as clams watching The Knight's Tale but it ends tomorrow. I am excited about the lecture I am giving tomorrow and on the paper they will be doing. I forgot that they don't have school next Thursday and Friday, though, so that sort of changes my whole schedule around. Of course I have it all printed out on all the things I made copies of that it is due Friday. Okay: positive thing of the day. The student I mentioned before that I had last year and was the only kid in my sixth period for awhile (I think I decided I would call her Rachel here) came in because she missed part of the movie today and wanted to watch the end. She came to watch it with fifth period and then wanted to watch the very end so stayed into my prep period. Then, of course, we talked almost my entire prep period. I just love that kid, she is so smart and funny and fun to talk to. She was telling me all about the other class the kids have to take (Seniors are required to take Govt. and Global Studies and my class). It is taught by the teacher who did the whole thing that made me not get to do Advanced English afterall. Anyway, she is having major problems with him because she didn't want to take Scholars with him. She is super smart, so of course he wanted her in that class. She just wanted to take regular English because she is Student Body President and is involved with sports, her church, etc. She is super busy and has a 4.0 and wanted to maintain it. She has tons of brothers and sisters and she has seen how much work they had to do for that class. Anyway, she also decided to drop Physics with him because she couldn't understand a word he was saying and her friend that normally helps her with that kind of stuff didn't either. So she has really gotten on his bad side because of that and he has been sort of out to get her. She is getting just on the edge of an A in his class and he keeps giving her 92 when his grading scale is a 93 for an A. She feels she has to get a 4.0 to get into BYU and he is going to mess that up, she thinks on purpose. Apparently no one in that class has an A and only 8 of 40 are passing. She also said that she wants to do something about it because of how things are for other kids who are in the same boat as her (4.0) and the way he is acting about the failing ones. She is just outraged because he said, "If you don't go in Scholars then you might as well not go to college." and this other girl said, "Okay I guess I won't." who she has been trying to get to do well all four years of high school. She also said he laughs about all those kids failing and is outraged that he as a teacher is tearing people down. You know, I can't say that I don't agree with her. It's one thing to be a hard-ass but I think it is wrong the way that he said those things. I tried to explain that maybe he has a different idea of how to build people up than we do. The kids have homework every single night in that class and had three papers due last week, plus he lectures or shows movies they need to take notes from so they never have any class time to work on things. No wonder they always put off my work to do his. That is one of my biggest pet peeves, I am the one that always ends up having to give them a break (i.e. "Oh, you have a huge paper due for him on that day, I guess I can make mine due on this day instead,") I don't do it that often, but these kids are super stressed. I know college is stressful, but at least in college you usually have classes every other day so that you don't have to do homework for one class every single night. It really pisses me off that he is doing that to her, too. If I had a kid that wasn't doing well enough to get an A and they HAD to get an A to get into the university they wanted, I would work something out with them to do extra work after they did all of my assignments. Anyway, she made me feel appreciated because I do give them a break sometimes. I also just love it that she will spend extra time to hang out and talk with me. I hope that she will ask me for a recommendation for college. I brought home a whole bunch of journals to grade and when I got home I just decided to leave them in the car. It's Thursday night and I already worked until 6pm. Too bad for the journals, they will just have to suffer in my freezing cold car. I do have to say the journals this time have been particularly juicy and full of gossip!!! It's funny knowing who has back-stabbed who and who cheated on who. Also interesting is reading the boys' journals because I always wondered how boys think. Some of the boys write really boring entries about sports all the time but some really bear their souls and it is so sweet to see how much they like certain girls. I always hoped that guys were like that--really liked girls as much as we liked them. When I was in high school I was pretty jaded and thought all guys were jerks and players. Anyway, I better get going and think some more about my hero lecture. I hope I do a good job. I still get nervous when I am talking for a long time.
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