This week we have Nicole’s OPI Iceberg Lotus, a fancy name for what is really sparkly teal. I mentioned last week that OPI is one of my favorite polishes. It really is all about the brush. It is nice though that most of the Nicole OPI colors can be found in a Target or Walmart for seven or eight dollars (and Target often clearances different colors out) The coverage is pretty good; I figure three coats is in the realm of pretty good. Two coats is very good. More than three coats is annoying and messy. Essie is usually in the four coat variety (sometimes even 5). It’s a shame when they have all those lovely colors lined up on display. Then I realize just how telling it is that the OPI stuff is usually sold out, in the wrong place, or otherwise missing. Essie can have their fancy display. I’ll stick with the stuff that works.
I needed something really fun and showy because this was the first week back to school. I cannot tell you what a difference it makes to work in a job that you like, sometimes even love. Almost everyone in my family for at least the last three generations have been teachers in one arena or another, and when my own plans at life fell through (again) I joined the family business. I spent five years subbing, or being tortured by principals, administrators, and sometimes students who hated English and me by extension. The worst of these was definitely, last year. Several of my friends were more than a little worried that I had walked into a tunnel that was collapsing around me. I was so stressed that I was throwing up nearly every morning. I was trying so hard, but I could not connect with the students to the director’s satisfaction. I was both panicked and relieved when he told me that things were just not going to work out.
This year is completely different. I am at a very different school with a different philosophy, focus, and student population. I have much younger students (middle school rather than high). And I am finally teaching something that I really love: Drama. I work with other teachers that seem, at least so far, to think that I am doing well. The best part is that I love my students! They are so amazing and sweet and enthusiastic and wonderful, and I love each and every last one of them. And after a three week rest, I came back to school for second semester in a completely different place than one year ago.
Unfortunately, that different place did not include sleep. A five day excursion to Disneyland that ends the day before you go back to school is not exactly restful, and I haven’t been sleeping much this week. Can’t seem to catch up. I’m not stressed exactly, nothing like last year’s hell. I do have a meeting with my principal next week, and I’m, of course, a little nervous about what he’ll have to say. But this is more the stress of staying up too late and getting up too early, nothing like the “any day now these people are going to fire me” nightmare of what I’ve been through.
Still, when the kids take forever to settle into routines that they had down perfectly before the break, and they just never seem to be able to focus for more than ten minutes, it can be really difficult to remember just how much I love them and my job. It is only after the lesson is over that I realize that they can’t keep focus for as long as the lesson asks them to. It’s not the students; it’s the lesson. Change yourself not other people. Yeah, that’s not a lesson I’m ever going to be done learning, is it?
Oh well, life is just never going to be perfect.
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