June 12, 2009
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The Daily News
1 Is there anything better than a job well done?
2 Without actually bragging, I feel that happened yesterday.
3 How often in life do we have an opportunity to finish a large task, and then sit and reflect on all of it?
4 After my last class yesterday, I felt I had been released from a prison perhaps of my own making.
5 What’s funny is that I had spent so much time reacting and preparing that when it all finally stopped I stood astonished.
6 My students sat and took a final while the rest of my presence suddenly had nothing really to do. I felt this immense sense of Catholic guilt. I thought that I should be helping everone, or working the room for further explanations, but really, I simply gave the prompts for the final and then spent the remainder of the day trying to get myself organized to exit this fine morning.
7 No matter how I looked at it, all the hard work had succeeded. My workload had suddenly lightened up and I found myself bouncing pencils on my desk and looking out to the baseball field.
8 I still had tons to do, but the lion’s share of the year had all been done and over before I even handed out a prompt.
9 My students had trouble grasping that it was over. They wanted the Cafe’ Verona to continue; they wanted my instant feedback on their finals, and for many, they wanted to cry.
10 So did I, in many ways.
11 It was a very stressful and emotional year, as are most.
12 But this year was arguably the most heartfelt and stressfulf in my entire career. My Mom’s illness, the online class, and the adaptation to suddenly working with the brightest lights in the district made for a wonderful ride, and an entire different respect than I had ever received in other places (ahem!).
13 My entire dream of teaching that began in college had finally reached “fruition” and I found that at long last I not only had an entire new generation loving my idiotic antics, but that I also began to understand Letterman’s humor.
14 If that makes no sense, then you haven’t been hanging out at 11:30 p.m. trying to make any of this immediate to a layperson.
15 Letterman is always sitting around giving me giggles and true smiles every single night. A lot of people don’t like the guy, but he has always been my end-of-the night go-to guy.
16 This takes nothing away from Leno, who I also revere after all these years. But Letterman was consistently underrated because of his tendency to be a bit acrid and acrimonious, neither word of which I understand but that I do know are early on in the dictionary.
17 Either way, his style is clearly consistent with my style, and it was nice last night finally to give his idiocy a listen.
18 Ah, he’s worth the investment. I have no specifics, just random thoughts to throw out there on this, the second-to-the last DN of this school year.
19 I’ll give a better deal tomorrow, hopefully, although I’m going to see Wicked tomorrow night immediately after I’ve turned in my keys and all.
20 So it will be another rush job, but what else is new?
21 Meanwhile, it’s still Friday, so love it. I’ll throw one more DN out there before I blast off for Mars. Thanks for abiding.
22 Meanwhile, I have one thing to say.
23 Peace.
~H~
