Finishing the Run

I've been working hard lately.  I didn't go on the climbing trip of my dreams over Memorial Day weekend for three reasons:  First, neither Allie nor Cuny wanted to go and I didn't want to ditch them on our one shared vacation.  Second, Allie and I both were recovering from colds, and three days of camping and hard climbing was probably not a good idea for my convalescent self.  Third, I had grading to do.  Lots of it.  I literally had boxes and piles several feet high of papers and journals waiting for my attention like millstones hung around my subconscious.

Teaching does that.  It gets into your subconscious and slowly fills it with obligations, responsibilities, and all important things to do.  After the first few weeks of the year, you get into the rhythm of the days.  Preparing lessons, teaching, grading, solving the millions of mini-crises brought to you each day, fitting all other parts of life around the mountain of teaching.  Then, these last few weeks, as piles of paper accumulate and my curriculum runs dry and I have to create lessons for three different subjects out of thin air, the sprint began.  You all know the feeling of the sprint at the end of the run.  You're tired, your feet are complaining, your legs are turning to mud, and the only way you can convince yourself to sprint that last stretch is that it will mean you will be able to stop sooner.  From somewhere inside your sweaty frame, you squeeze out a little bit more stamina, with all the grace of squeezing out the last bit of ketchup from the sputtering bottle.  Your plodding feet plod a little louder and a little faster.  After about a block your biggest fear is that you're going to trip, throw up, or that your heart is going to ooze out your nose.  All your concentration is on getting to that self-imposed finish line, the random bit of sidewalk you picked as the point where you can begin to walk.  You long to walk like a wilting plant for water.  Then, when you get there, despite the fact that all you've been longing to stop with all your might, the action of stopping causes you to stumble.  You have to force yourself to walk and your body panics, trying to slow down the pace, unable to accept the run is over.

That's what the end of the year is.  You've been running for 179 days of school, nine months, 36 weeks, with only a few short water and bathroom breaks along the marathon break.  Then comes the sprint at the end.  The final projects, the clean out, the mountains and mountains of late work streaming in from every student's backpack.  Wearily you jettison the parts of your life you enjoy (skating, climbing, cooking, and sleeping) and work a little faster.  You grade through a weekend, you grade until nine p.m. on a week night.

Then suddenly, you pass that mark on the sidewalk.  The students cheerily wave good bye and disappear in a cloud of paper bits and too much Axe body spray.   The grading is done, the late work is done, and all that's left is loose ends:  cleaning off your desk to find any last stray assignments, getting your checkout form signed by the financial secretary, going to the faculty lunch, and cleaning the snack food out of your desk before it goes bad for the summer.  Your hamster wheel has abruptly, impossibly, run out of wheel.  The to-do list has an end.

Tomorrow is the last day of school.  The students only go to their first period classes, and I have prep that period, so I won't even see any students.  I've trying to keep up so hard that the end of the year has completely snuck up on me mentally.  My habit-conditioned brain isn't sure what comes next.  My shoulders feel lighter as the invisible millstones I forgot I was carrying evaporate without warning.  24 hours from now, school will be over.  I will set my own schedule, be responsible for only myself and my own time, and do whatever I want.  It's exciting and disorienting.  It's going to take me a while to adjust to a new pace of life, to find a new rhythm and habit.

Of course, I'm sure the dreads will help.  26 hours until the commencement of the Dread Party.  To my surprise, school is all but out, I get dreads tomorrow, and summer is here.  I'm surprised, disoriented, and thoroughly delighted.