Goodbye, Freedom. I'll see you in four months.

Tomorrow I begin my slavery to the Public School System, more specifically to Whittier Middle School here in Norman, and most directly to Billie Carlsen and her 7 classes of sixth graders.

How do I feel? I am anxious and itching to start, primarily because I have been going stir crazy here for the past two weeks, stuck at home with no money, no work, few friends in town, and therefore not a whole lot to do. Mainly I'm really looking forward to being in the classroom every day, getting to know the students, and developing my teaching persona. After these next four months I will be officially certified to have my own classroom, full of my own students, steered by my own lesson plans - and that is the goal I have been working towards for the past two years here at OU. Lord willing, at the end of this internship I will be moving to Austin, acquiring a teaching job, and enjoying my favorite city with great friends (new and old). There are so many things to look forward to, and I see tomorrow as the catalyst that will bring all that I've been working for into the cosmic motion of fulfillment.

I know these four months will fly by, that I will most likely constantly be exhausted, that I will experience disappointing failures and frustrations more often than victorious triumphs and rewards.  I will be counting my pennies, probably using them to buy ramen at the local Homeland (grocery store, the only one in Norman other than Super Target or Super Wal-Mart). I'm sure I will laugh, cry, humiliate myself, somehow get in a fight with a student, and most definitely stick my foot in my mouth on numerous (NUMEROUS) occasions [I already do that on almost a daily basis with adults, why should I expect anything less with twelve year-olds?].

But overall, after all of the frustrations and humiliations I've experienced as both a study skills instructor at the Athletic Department and a substitute teacher at the secondary level, I'm still really looking forward to being a teacher. I really enjoy being around young people, giving them a space to speak their minds, and being alongside them as they experience certain emotions, circumstances, and thoughts for the first time. Most of all, I love seeing them grow - seeing their confidence shift from insecure and soft-spoken to self-assured and a willingness to be vulnerable. I love to see their minds thinking, and love even more seeing their hearts be stretched, pressed, twisted, yet beating with the greatest fragility and intensity humanity can offer.

When people ask me why I choose to work with middle school students, I tell them that I don't think life changes all that much after junior high, it's just that junior high is the first time we encounter the adult world, and therefore we are very shaky in knowing how to handle the situations we find ourselves in with friends, family, lovers, classmates, superiors, and our overall society as a whole. I enjoy working with junior highers because they are so diverse, and often can think much more deeply and genuinely about subjects than people think they can. They have so much potential - for both evil (straight up EVIL,  I will not lightly call it "bad") and good (sweetness, friendliness, fun, and kindness). They keep my hyperly over-active mind (which can often be very annoying to me at times) well-worked by constantly challenging it to new problems and situations. I love being able to come home each evening not having to find some sort of way to dull my mind so I can peacefully sleep at night - after a day at school all my mind can do is enjoy a good run and some inspirational prose or poetry, perhaps a nice conversation.

I'm not sure exactly where this semester will take me. I am pretty confident it will be nothing like anything I could ever possibly imagine at this point in time. My question to end on is, will my experience tomorrow be a foreshadowing of what the entire semester has in store? Time will only tell...