I cannot for the life of me remember why, but back in Season 5,1 I started the habit of wearing either a solid white or black shirt on major test days:
It was one of those weird things that I continued for every single test day in my AP Stat classes that I’m not sure anyone ever picked up on. I’d wear white for A-day, then black for B-day… and then swap for the next exam, and so forth.
I finally broke away from this sometime the middle of last year,2 for no better a reason than why I started.3 But tomorrow is our first major exam of the new year,4 anddddd…
In my fifth year of teaching the subject, there aren’t a whole lot of “firsts” to be had, but this is definitely the first time that I have only taught one prep. And when it comes time to grade piles of papers, that means grading six periods’ worth of the same thing.5 For you math teachers who have never graded AP Stat exams: It’s an acquired taste.
Open House was last night, and while it’s always a bit nerve-wracking to meet parents in the new neighborhood for the first time, I was incredibly fortunate enough to have nothing but kindness and cordiality from the new locals.67 It was during last night — on top of everything that transpired this past week8 — that I realized how fortunate and blessed I am to have had circumstances fall into place just the way they did, when they did.
Three weeks into the new journey, and things are finally starting to feel like home. The perennial feeling of homesickness has slowly9 worn off a bit, and I don’t feel like a fish-out-of-water as much as a few weeks ago.10
- 2011-12 [↩]
- after about two years [↩]
- which is to say: for no reason, really. [↩]
- in the new place [↩]
- It also means teaching the same lesson six times in a row every time… that’s a whole other #firstworldproblem [↩]
- I still remember my very first Open House when I got angrily chewed out by some of the parents of my Pre-AP Algebra II students… I’ll tell ya, that stuff sticks with you FOR-EVER. [↩]
- I did, however, have one set of parents ask me if I had met “Mr. Nguyen” — which is the fictitious name for the other Asian teacher on campus. Meh. [↩]
- with my grandmother’s passing and my subsequent trip to California [↩]
- but surely [↩]
- Incidentally, if you’re on my FB, today was the day of the Apple keynote “flunk” funny… [↩]