Appreciation and Acknowledgement

These past few weeks have been super stressful, to say the least, even though I'm a type-B personality. I don't usually get stressed, though my friends from school say otherwise. But it's never been like this. I feel nauseous all the time (no, I'm not pregnant) and I need to constantly remind myself to breathe. Stress from work, stress from school, stress from friends. Thankfully, no stress from home.

It's performance season at school, and between last week and this week, I have 14 school plays that I'm accompanying. Keep in mind that it's been about 8 years since I've practiced seriously, and trying to learn all this music, keep up with the kids, and deal with the other teachers' and administration's stress, is just a little more than I am used to. Tonight was the two kindergarten classes and a first grade class, making it the 7th, 8th, and 9th play performances so far. For the first time, though, the class moms from Kindergarten gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and a first grader gave me a bouquet of pink roses. It really made my night. Everything negative that I went through just didn't matter as much.

My professor, on the other hand, doesn't understand that we are teachers, and it's crazy season for us right now. Instead of being more understanding, she's been assigning just as much work as normal, which, under normal circumstances, would be fine. But we all have concerts and graduations and end-of-the-year festivals and stuff at school, so how does she expect us to read fifty pages (of really poor-quality scanned texts), actively listen to Act I scene i of Wagner's Valkyrie, and write a 5 page paper on everything between Monday night and Wednesday afternoon? Pure craziness! Not to mention that in eight days, we would have had four class sessions already, due to a make up from Memorial day.

The last thing I need off my chest. Today at school, I learned an interesting tidbit about one of my friends. I couldn't believe it when I heard it, and was initially shocked that she never told me herself. After thinking about it for a bit, though, I can't say I blame her. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn't tell us. Perhaps that's why she's been so slippery these past few years. I wish she did tell me, though. It feels a bit like she doesn't trust me. So much for being best friends all this time.