When it rains, it pours

People have most often associated me with the following terms: OCD, obsessive, perfectionist, reliable, organized, punctual. This week, the first week of school I might add, I have broken every preconceived notion that might be associated with my name.

We started the week with a printer meltdown that had me using my favorite four letter words before 7:15 in the morning. As the day progressed, I was informed that I made the most significant of all grading errors...an error that will required 120 hand-filled forms and hours of computer updating. Surely it can't get worse. But it does. Why? Because when it rains, it pours. Next, our ninth grade volleyball coach quit a few days before tryouts. Guess who gets to help cover tryouts AND have her own practices? Yep. Me. To top it all off, on the fourth day of school I told multiple students to "back off," "leave me alone for a minute," and "stop talking to me right now." Nice first impression.

It is actually raining right now (which is nice since I haven't watered my flowers or garden since Sunday). But what I noticed is that it wasn't pouring; it was more of a light sprinkle. As I trudged down 440, I started to think about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. Maybe it isn't pouring after all. Sure, things are not going smoothly. That doesn't mean, however, that it is all bad. Case in point, the 250 minutes spent watching my students work together to answer this question: "what does it mean to be human." It was awesome. They were arguing, collaborating, stretching their minds. Sure, there were some dark clouds (cough, cough *grade change forms) hanging over my head. But I seemed to forget about those worries when I was listening to my 15 year-olds struggle with the most difficult question ever asked.

Moral(s) of the story: no one is perfect; learn to value what really matters; Saturday is always right around the corner :)