WR-3, Novice, Secondary, English
Audio Transcript
I’m having a really hard year. Everyone said it would be hard, and I knew it would be, but I couldn’t appreciate how hard it was until I actually started doing it. Tomorrow is the first day of Thanksgiving break and that’s a really good thing because I don’t know if I could have kept going otherwise.
The second year teachers keep telling me to make sure I take the time to work out or relax but I’m finding that really hard to do. I don’t think they remember what it’s like in the first year when you have to create all of your lesson plans from scratch. They’re all in volleyball leagues and softball leagues and I see that they take time for themselves but I think the only reason they have time for that is because they’re in the second year. I really doubt they did stuff like that last year.
I’m trying to take better care of myself. I got a membership to the gym, but I’ve literally gone twice since school started and both times were the first week of school. I joined a farm co-op because I usually like to eat a lot of fresh produce and I really like cooking. But I just don’t have time to cook—so the produce keeps rotting and I end up throwing it away and eating frozen pizza. I’m staying up so late at night so I keep napping after school when I should be getting work done so it’s become this vicious cycle. And I wake up so disoriented from the naps that it takes me a really long time to recover.
Every week I feel like I try something new and every week something comes up that gets in the way. Last week I planned to go to this book reading at the library. I was really looking forward to it. And then I didn’t get all my grading done so I couldn’t go. The week before that I planned to go to a yoga class. My sister has been trying to get me to do yoga so I was actually going to go one afternoon and then that day I had a bunch of students misbehave and I had to stay with them for after school detention. I just feel like nothing I try works.
My roommate is really worried about me. I tell him I’m fine, but, I mean, what else am I going to say? He’s a first year teacher too but somehow he gets it all done and still gets to the gym. I don’t know how he’s doing it but he is.