First Day Jitters

The beginning of school has never been easy, and since becoming a teacher, it has only gotten harder. Starting the week before, anxiety would begin to kick in until the night before when I wouldn't be able to sleep. Even weeks before school starts, I'll have dreams where I show up to school without a syllabus, without a class roster, or the students just ignore everything I say, but usually the nightmare is about school - not the day before school starts.

Well, today is the first day of school and yesterday was pretty much a nightmare. Actually, last week was a nightmare as well - I still don't have a school laptop so I couldn't print, check emails, or plan very well, and a migraine hit around Wednesday around the same time my throat started to hurt. Our text books wouldn't be delivered until school had already started, the studio had failed final inspection... you name it, it went wrong. By Friday I was ready to go home.

Saturday was rough, but not as bad as when I went to bed. I could not sleep. My daughter, who we have been trying to get to sleep by herself, actually slept about 4-5 hours alone while I kept waiting for her to wake up to do something about it my agony. Finally, she did, and I took something but I felt distinctly feverish. Sunday morning I had a 100 degree fever. Great. Tomorrow is the first day of school - how can I stay home?

I go to Quick Care and see a doctor, get a prescription that took the pharmacy 45 minutes to fill, then go home to find out that my daughter has scratched my husband's eye while I was gone.

Back to the emergency room with the baby and husband. Things went slowly, but relatively smoothly until we tried to fill his prescription: Walgreen's had a thirty minute wait, so we went for yogurt, but when we got back, we found out that they thought we were just getting out of line so we started from the bottom again. Then they couldn't find proof that insurance would cover his eye drops, so at 11 o'clock pm last night after a trip to the emergency room, Walgreens, and everywhere else, we finally get home. It was a bit much for any day, much less the Sunday before school starts.

But, you know, school went wonderfully today. I have wonderful classes, I teach wonderful subjects, and I'm feeling so much better.