Highs and Lows

After class two weeks ago, a student came up and thanked me and told me how his parents never thought he'd make it to college, let alone pass his classes, and he was so grateful to me for helping him craft his papers. It was one of those moments that make all the long unpaid planning and grading hours worth it.

The next night, another student came up after my other class and told me how he ran into a couple other students somewhere, and they all agreed that they didn't understand half of what I was talking about, and I talked too fast, and everything I wrote on the board was confusing.

Gut punch.  Back to the planning board.  Time to revise, yet again, my teaching notes for simplicity and clarity.

Another 10 week term of teaching is completed, and a new one, perhaps my last here, has started.  The one just completed was a difficult term.  I had too many distractions and 2 large classes, including some students who needed remedial grammar work. This new term I only have one writing class and the service learning class, but I'm still a bit worried about getting everything done for class while fretting about the move and the kids and managing the other events in our life.

I can't look too far ahead at the calendar without feeling overwhelmed. This is when I need to just take one day at a time. But we also need to figure out some plan for the shadowy future.

It is also Holy Week.  I broke every Lenten promise I made this weekend - it was the Seabee Ball weekend and Palm Sunday and we just returned from San Diego school shopping for two intense days. I am tempted to throw in the towel on moving and just stay here and let my husband commute 3 or 4 hours each way.  The school I liked is way too expensive and doesn't offer enough financial aid. The other schools are in areas where we can't afford to live or don't want to live. Nothing seems to feel right.

So I was weak in the will - bring on the sweets and the swill! Stay up late and grump the next morning. . . . check out facebook and neglect that book of spiritual reading. . . have a pity party and place all the blame for everything wrong on somebody else.

But now time to refocus. I need to remind myself that my problems are not so big. Pope Francis writes in his The Joy of the Gospel (which I did finally finish),

 "Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew; it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power." (186)

We'll pull out the few Easter decorations we own this weekend and color some eggs and look for the beauty of these spring days.

And some other events of the last week:

Robot wars!

Palm Sunday

soccer joy

soccer exhaustion

soccer skills