Some good things this week.  First, this was the best return after Christmas break ever.  The kids got right o work.  Amazing.  I barely had to struggle to get anyone to work.  Usually the first couple of days back, you fight to get anything done.  The kids whine about being back and being too tired.  I really think that a full week and a half  and not returning right after New Year's Day made the difference.  If I was an administrator or board member, I would never have school start up again on January 2 ever.  It is a waste.  This was the most productive return I have ever had.  My kids worked me so hard I was pooped by the end of the week.  Perfect.

Next, I saw a great post online.  A former student is studying radiology.  She said she is excelling because she knows how not to over or under expose her x-rays.  Then she credited taking photo with me for teaching her this.  I was flabbergasted.  It was so kind of her to do that.  But it also taught me that there are subject areas that benefit from what I teach and I am clueless about them.  I always go on about the physics and chemistry of what we do, but there are other things I never even thought about.  I know that my area is one of the first to go when cuts are needed.  I know that some people are foaming at the mouth trying to get my classrooms for the dreaded influx of autistic students (the panic in the building makes me sick).  However, apparently my class does more than make pretty pictures.   This won't help me keep my darkroom or my program, but it helps me emotionally.

So Friday night was fantastic.  We are meeting more nice people and I am even running into a couple of people I used to know.  I had such a great, long conversation with a gal I used to know years back.  My friend and I said the people, music, and small crowd made it like a nice little basement party.  Fabulous.

So, I go to the bar and the bartender already knows.  "Tap water?"  "Yes, thank you."  I do leave him a tip though it costs nothing.  No one I associate with there ever gets sloppy drunk.  Some of us just get water the whole night.  As we are driving home, there is a car pulled over on route 280, driver door open, driver leaning out puking on the roadway.  Cops?  Not one in sight.  Now lets compare this to earlier in the week.  Went out with not-my-types this week.  Drunks outnumbered sober people.  Voices were way too loud.  I was one of the first to leave, as has become my M.O..  From what I gather, not everyone who drove themselves home was sober.  The luck of these selfish people is astounding.

Now, I have grown up as the loser.  I didn't do drugs.  Strike one.  I didn't drink.  Strike two.  And I didn't screw around.  Strike three.  I have my reasons for the choices I make, and in a world where everyone bares their souls, I am keeping all of my reasons to myself.  When I got to college, there was a faction of ladies at the radio station that sneered at those of us who did not live by sex, drugs, drinking.  I found a couple of people who lived like me.  The issues seemed to go away when life in the work world started.  I have always kept to myself on the job, focusing on work, not socializing.  Then I got this job.

I take the opportunity to let my students know that I don't drink to get drunk and I do not do drugs, never have.  I think they need someone talking to them honestly.  I don't sugar coat anything.  I want them to have someone they can look up to.  Having to spend an evening with a bunch of "adults" drinking crap, being obnoxiously loud, talking about drugs, and whatever else is not my cup of tea.  And then seeing those same people pass themselves off as figures of authority to be respected and obeyed the next day?  I am getting tired of it.

I don't like having to prove myself as someone to be taken seriously at work.  I have had colleagues get the message across to me that I am not respected ( I teach "fluff"), emotional (hello sexism, we call it anger), and not taken seriously because of my opinions and beliefs (hello to the jerks who did not even read my ISS proposal).  However, if you want to find a teacher who is a good role model for the students, loves them deeply and cares for their well being, wants to teach them the subject as well as how to be good citizens of this world, it sure as hell is not going to be many of my colleagues.

I grew up with a mother who spent most of her time criticizing my tastes in music, clothing, extra-curriculars, and friends.  And I still get this from so-called friends at work.  On the surface, these perfect, normal looking people are mother's dream friends for me.  They look and act normal.  They are not freaks.  They love their sports, love their arena concerts. love contemporary movies and TV.  Text book perfect normal.  And very critical of people like me.  Now, I go out Friday night and I feel I can be myself again.  I am not criticized for who I am.   Many of us keep this part of ourselves hidden from colleagues and family.  People do still judge based on your tastes and how you look.  We play a part during the week just to get by.  Yet it is ironic that we have to hide our tastes from the majority of people for fear of being judged.  The music we like, how we dress, how we dance, the art we like or make, the way we do our hair or makeup all make us fair game for ridicule.  However, at that same time, those who judge us are busy at the sports bars drinking themselves into oblivion, reminiscing about their drug days, maybe still popping pills, and driving home drunk with a gold card in their pockets to get off scott free if they get pulled over.

I'll take my freak friends.  You can shove your normalcy.  I know I lead the kind of life that my students will be able to look up to and I am not a hypocrite in the classroom.