Ugh!

I guess every teacher feels like this once in awhile. You guys do, don't you? I sure hope so, because if not, things are even worse than it seems!

I'm just feeling stupid and incompetent and afraid and frustrated. And I know that I'm not stupid or incompetent (not greatly so, anyway) and so I feel even stupider for feeling stupid! (It's a vicious cycle.)

As far as afraid... I'm not sure why I'm afraid or what I'm afraid of. Here, let me go look up my quote from Mr. Goldman...

Oh, dammit. I can't find it. This is where having an electronic library (rather than stacks and stacks of books) would be helpful. Anyway, it's where he's talking about his own writing, and he says that he truly believes that he doesn't know what he's doing - he doesn't know why one thing works and another doesn't (maybe it's in the "nobody knows anything" section, but I don't think so) - anyway, he doesn't think he knows what he's doing, and his secret fear is that one day he'll wake up and everyone else will suddenly have realized the truth: that he's a talentless hack.

That resonates with me; that idea is something I cling to in my weakest moments. Because he's William Goldman, for God's sake! And if he can have that fear and still do great things, then so can I. (Plus either I'm not crazy, or I'm crazy like William Goldman, which isn't such a bad thing.)

As far as stupidity: I lose things. I set one thing down because my hands are full and I MUST pick up this other thing, and then ninety seconds later I've taken care of the other thing and I want to pick the first back up again and finish whatever I was doing with it and OMG IT IS GONE!! WTF?!

Today was especially bad with this, and the more I lost things, the more frustrated and stressed I got, which may have made it even more difficult to remember where I'd put whatever-it-was and what was I doing thirty seconds ago? it was something a student asked me to do... AUGH.

And I'm seriously stressed about the yearbook. Everyone wants more pictures and they don't seem to understand that GETTING PICTURES IS A PROBLEM WHEN NONE OF MY STUDENTS WILL GO TO THE DAMN EVENTS. And halfway through the term I am being FORCED to change the size of the book, which means REDOING ALL OUR LAYOUTS. (In one week.) Oh, and shelling out another five grand. AND getting board approval for a new contract in that same week.

I was supposed to make sure that I got transfer students added to the list for photo retake day so that they wouldn't be excluded from the yearbook, but despite asking for a list of said students, I didn't get one.

...

I feel much better after calling and venting to my mommy. :D