Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Gahhhh! Summer! Ugh!

I have been on summer vacation for three days now and have already heard four different people tell me that the three months that take place during the hottest part of the year are the part of the teaching profession that they envy most. Whenever anyone realizes that I am somewhere close to the beginning of this long, forced vacation (at some jobs the call it a furlough) they start demanding that I provide a list of exciting things that I have planned to fill the empty hours. When I say, "No plans," they fix me with accusing gazes and wax poetic about how nice it must be. I'm sorry, people, they don't make summer camp for adults. When I was a kid my friends had summer break with me. Now my friends work and fix me with withering gazes. One day I'll have children and then I'll be back to having plans that other people think are exciting.

So here, this is what I mean when I say, "No plans."

This summer, like every summer, I'm going to read as many books as I can. I'm going to play my way through a couple of video games that I never got to beat. I'm going to finish recording the demos for the two bands in which I play (then I'll use those demos to get to play more local shows in bars and warehouses and people's basements). I'm going to watch as many horror movies as I can stomach. I'm going to putter around my house, painting here, fixing there, tidying as much as I can. I'm going to cook my wife dinner as often as she wants. I'm going to get together with some friends and play Dungeons and Dragons at last once. I might do some yoga. I might do some pushups. I might drink some beers. My step-brother died a few days ago, so I'm going to continue being sad and angry about that for a while. Then I'll move on and just have nice memories. I'm going to go over the curriculum plans for the classes I teach and make them more effective at meeting important educational goals and more engaging for my students. Lastly I'm going to do my damnedest to keep as much loud, angry music blaring from as many speakers in my house at a time as I can.

It's not a bad way to spend three months with no plans.

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