Anniversaries

Today makes one complete week since I gave up my car.  I know that I will have more and better observations and after a few months of my new lifestyle, but here are a few things I've noticed so far:

   

1.  The cheapest part about getting a used bike is the bike.  I'm headed to the store to buy another $50 worth of stuff, making my total bike-related expenditures close to $200.  Granted, these are all one-time purchases, and all together it's still $225 cheaper than buying the new bike I had wanted.  Plus, even if I did buy the new bike, I would still have needed to buy the pump, the patch kit, the tire levers, the chain grease, the rack and panniers, and the lights.  So, this is still the cheaper option by far.  If only my bike would change gears... that will be this weekend's project.  

   

2.   In the past week I have been to or talked to the employees of at least six different bike shops.  They have all been courteous, friendly, and genuinely interested in meeting my needs, not selling me expensive gear.   If these are the type of people I get to be around if I become a "cyclist," sign me up.  

   

3.   Bike racks are usually closer than the closest parking spots.  Take that, car drivers.

   

4.   Anyone going to give up his or her car should spend a few days walking or bussing everywhere before switching to a bike.  It will make whatever bike he or she ends up with a dream come true: fast, easy, cargo-carrying, and convenient.  

    

5.   Yeah, helmets really are dorky.  Really.

    

6.   The extra planning it's been taking me to coordinate places to store my bike, times to catch the bus, etc. has actually had a positive effect on other details in my life.  I've packed a lunch every day this week, and my room's clean.  After taking an hour a half to get home, the five seconds extra momentum needed to put away my clothes and wash a tupperware seems like nothing.

7.    You know that feeling of independence and freedom you have when you have a car?  You have the ability to take off any moment of the day or night and run errands, go for a drive, pick something up quickly.  That ability and the accompanying feeling is, unfortunately, largely curtailed when your primary modes of transportation are busses, your bike, and your own two feet.  But the compensation is that you can go all sorts of places cars can't, and you can still go nearly anywhere you care to go, you just evaluate how much you care a lot more before you set out.  

   

8.    Naming your bike is worth it; you're going to be spending a lot of time with he/she/it.  Maggie and I have spent several hours getting acquainted already, and I anticipate many happy hours spent riding her and several frustrated hours learning to fix and maintain her.  She and I are going to be going a long way together.  

Transportation Solutions

At the beginning of the school year, I was charged with green energy and conscious of a decaying automobile.  I planned to ride the bus to work for at least the first few months of school.  I tried it once or twice and discovered that it just wasn't practical.  If I drove to work, I could leave at 6:50 and get to school by 7:15.  I could leave the school in the afternoon whenever I wanted and be home 20-40 minutes later, depending on traffic.  But when I rode the bus, I had to leave the house at 5:48 and was dropped off about a mile from school at 7:00.  After a 20-minute walk, I arrived at school, an hour and a half after I had left.  I wasn't leaving the school until five or six o'clock most nights, meaning that I wouldn't get home until six or seven thirty.  Only to leave again less than twleve hours later.  

   

As a first year teacher in the first few weeks of school, I just wasn't that on top of things.  I was at my limit just surviving day to day, and the extra effort seemed impossible.  I was embarrassed to walk through town in my casual clothes after school and wait at the bus stop on the town's main drag to be picked up.  I didn't know how to load my bike onto the bus.  I didn't want to wear a helment.  So, except for a few times when my car needed repairs, I never rode the bus.  Sure, I wanted to be car-free and everything, but it just wasn't practical.  After my bike got stolen, being car-free was even less practical.  Daylight hours were short, and girls aren't supposed to walk alone after dark.  Since I usually got home after dark, I resigned myself to driving the few blocks to the coffee shop and grocery store.  And it was cold.  I was coming home exhausted every day, and the last thing I wanted was to bundle up and shuffle through the cold to carry my groceries.  The green revolution of my life would have to wait.

   

Well, this week's events have brought that revolution to pass much more quickly and less voluntarily than anticipated. 

   

I would like to proudly announce that I am now car-free.  Gigi is now only to be used for emergencies and job interviews. (Did I mention I found out that I didn't have a job next year the day after finding out my car was broken? Yeah. Good times.)  Maybe it's because I'm more on top of things now and more relaxed about teaching. Maybe it's because I usually leave school in the afternoons at 3:30 or 4:00 now instead of 6:00.  Maybe it's because I found a bus that leaves at 6:13 instead of 5:52 in the mornings.  Maybe it's because it only takes me half an hour to get ready now, so I can still sleep in until 5:20.  Maybe it's because I know that the weather is only going to get warmer.  Maybe it's because I know I've got no other option (fixing Gigi isn't going to happen anytime in the next few months).  Whatever the reason, I haven't minded the bus rides or cold walks the past few days.  

   

So I've purchased my student bus pass and a bike from DI to shorten the walk from bus stop to school.  That gives me an initial outlay of about $150, not counting the bribes I'm paying people to teach me how to fix my bike.  I'm keeping a record of how much I'm not spending with this transportation method (daily bus fare, gas money).  I figure this will pay for itself before school gets out.  That's not even counting the money I'm not spending on Gigi ($650-850).  

   

As an added bonus, I figure I just drastically reduced my carbon footprint, right?  I'm saving the world.  And I'm doing my part to support the local mass transit system.  And goodness knows, UTA could use some supporting.  In conclusion, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not going to look at this as a catastrophy or an inconvenience.  I'm going to consider it the realization of a goal.  Pride, after all, makes an excellent salve for cold fingers and frustration at longer commute times.  

Transportation Woes, Again

The following blog contains whining.

    

Sigh.  $650 to fix the car.  That's the best case scenario (I limp the car home, and a guy my dad knows fixes it and figures it doesn't really need all the repairs the shops are telling me it needs).  I got it checked at two different shops today, and they both estimated repairs at over $800.  It needs a new clutch, a new cable, and a new pedal assembly.  It only cost a couple thousand in the first place, and I could get about $500 dollars if I sold it.  I'm a little tempted just to forget I own a car and buy the bike I've been drooling over and a monthly bus pass and bite the hour long commute bullet.  The bike will only cost $425, and a bus pass will cost roughly the same amount as gasoline for the car.  But no one will have a Kona Smoke in stock for me to try out until mid-April, and if I don't get a job at the same school next year, I'll need a car for interviews.  And it's snowing right now.  And there's a possibility Mom and Dad might get me a bike for graduation.  

Either purchase would break the bank and put me in debt.  Debt that would take at least two to five months to pay off.  

The Story of My Life

This week is "Parents in School" week.  Parents are invited to attend some of their students' classes.  A parent can come for part of a class or multiple classes and is provided with lunch.  The custodians give the teachers extra chairs in their classrooms, and the administration urges the teachers to make it a positive experience for everyone.  Only two parents planned to attend my class, and one came today.  

   

I was worried, let's be honest.  I did not know whose parent was coming, just that one would be there.  The class he/she would attend is my rowdiest, hardest, most out-of-control.  I refer to them (sometimes affectionately) as my "runaway class."  Both possible meanings (that they resemble runaway horses or that they make me want to run far, far away some days) are equally applicable to this class.  I usually end this class feeling like a terrible teacher and an idiot.  Sometimes I'm so angry I could cheerfully throw a desk across the room and I spend time in the car on the way home giving my steering wheel the lectures I wish I could give the offending students.  Other times I put my head on my desk and cry.  I have referred three people from this class to the principal's office, one has been moved to alternative school, and four have had detention with me in the last 48 hours.

   

So, into this den of pubescent energy was going to come a parent.  Most likely, this parent would belong to one of the quiet, over-achieving "good" kids that sit through this class with pained expressions on their faces and frequent eye-rolls when people won't "shut-up."  This parent would get to watch me take 90 minutes to fail to teach this class.  In other words, I was not excited to have this parent come.  

   

As the students filtered in, I tried to prepare.  The assignment was on the board, I had planned activities that would give them as little opportunity to be jerks as possible, and the room was neat and orderly.  One of my best students strolls in and announces, a little embarrassed, "My mom's coming today."  Of course, it would be her mother.  This girl's approach to life is maximum effort, least wasted time, and she is one of the most frustrated of the eye-rollers.  I could just picture her equally determined and put-together mother sitting in the back of my classroom with an expression of dismay and disappointment on her face as I struggled to control the boisterous youths that the government had confined to desks.  

   

The dreaded mother arrived, looking meek, but that could be just the exterior.  I taught my lesson.  In less than ten minutes the class owed time after the bell, and I had had to shout over them multiple times to be heard, asking them to quiet down.  Things went better during the reading, even this class enjoys being read to.  While the rest were working on grammar worksheets, I pulled my detention servers aside one-by-one.  I thanked the ones that were showing improvement, and reminded a couple of the goals for improvement we had set, mentioning specific behaviors that were cropping up that we had agreed would not be a problem again.  After I got the class to the computer lab, the students were separated enough that this mother and her daughter could focus on the project research, instead of the antics of my wild horses on the other side of the room.  

  

Half an hour before the bell, the mother came up to tell me she had to go pick up her kindergarten student.  Here it came, the disappointed look, the shake of the head.  I thanked her for coming, and she told me that ... she appreciated me and that I had her sympathy.  She said she wasn't sure she could do what I did.  "I had forgotten what junior high was really like...I've never seen such disrespect in my whole life!  I just wanted to go up and strangle a few of them.  I wanted to ask them if their parents knew how they were behaving."  

   

Relief flooded through me that as I assured her that this was my rowdiest class, and that not every class was like that.  She left shaking her head, but not at me.  She wasn't going to go home and tell her husband that I was a terrible teacher and then call the principal to tell him the same.  She left thinking, "Wow, junior high teachers have to put up with A LOT."  And, as much as I love my students, she's right.  I know I'm not a terrible teacher, and I know that these students are just young people trying to get what fun they can out of adolescence, but the fact still stands that I put up with a lot.  

   

Here's a sample of my favorite one-liners that my students have seen fit to announce to the room.  Most of these happen during class, sometimes in the middle of one of my sentences, or when I ask if there are any questions.

   

"You're cupboards are dirty, woman!" Luckily, this was after school, because he would have been in the principal's office if it had been in session.

"Why don't you just do it for me?"

"You hate me 'cause I'm Asian!"  This one I heard about three times a day for a while.

"Can I go play in the snow?"  This one was asked every five minutes at full voice during a lecture on pronouns.

Me, "Are there any questions? Yes--"  "I'd like to take a free pass on this."  Me: "Haha. Any other questions. Yes, again--" Same student: "I'd like to take a free pas on this."  "There are no free passes.  Any other questions? Yes--"  Same student: "It's time for me to go play outside."

   

"He said he hates me because I'm Asian!" Said in the middle of an explanation of a project while pointing to a student I'm sure has never said that many words the whole time he's been in my class.

"I'm bored!"

"This sucks!"

"This class is gay."

   

I do love my job.  Really.  But this is just from three students.  In the same class.  And just a few of the most memorable one-liners.  It's wearing on me.  I'm getting so I start each day with less and less patience.  I'm getting ruder and ruder to those students, because they are such jerks to me and those around them.