“Maybe teaching is my art. There are thousands of artists who suffered just as much as Van Gogh but didn’t achieve his success.”
(Sorry so many of these. This is not what this blog was supposed to be about. Emotion. But all my emotions are work related lately.)
If I quit, my class would be like it is everyday when I have a sub. I mean, that’s obvious, but it’s also not the most prevalent consideration. It’s probably the underlying reason behind why I would never do that, though.
Sometimes I wonder what nine-to-fivers do. What’s their life like. Is anyone’s day really like that? Work until a time and then you’re done. Maybe you vent about work over drinks. But your life doesn’t revolve around it. I mean, I spent this whole weekend worrying about work. Maybe it’s just because I suck at compartmentalizing.
My girlfriend’s brother committed suicide during my first semester of teaching. It was a tough semester, a tough classroom that had rejected four teachers before me, and then that happened. I saw too much in those five months how loss and abandonment destroys everything. Maybe that’s why it’s always on my mind. Maybe it’s why I’ll never do it. Or maybe it’s why one day I will. Maybe that’s why it feels like such an obligation, because I know what it would be like if I left. Maybe that does nobody any good.
Maybe teaching is my art. There are thousands of artists who suffered just as much as Van Gogh but didn’t achieve his success.
I want to write stories about all this. What do all those people who go to work in all those office buildings in Hawai’i really do? What would happen to each of my students if I quit? What would that classroom look like?
*By the way, if any of my students come across this, you can rest assured that I’m not quitting any time soon. The union is talking about striking though…
