Friday, April 30, 2010

Taking work home...

I have never been someone that works well at home.  In college I HAD to go to the coffee shops to work.  At home I was ALWAYS distracted by the most random things.  Sometimes I'd even be possessed to clean my room instead of writing papers or reading books.  So I'd spend hours at coffee shops, which wasn't always good when I finally got to interact with people... I'd be slightly wound up.  Libraries usually bored me because they were so quiet!  I couldn't get things done with all that silence!  I was afraid to erase anything because erasing sounds like jack hammers going off in the library.
It's odd now to have a job that consistently causes me to be working at home.  There always seems to be papers to grade, tests or games to create, or lesson/unit plans to make.  I can categorically say I get WAY less done at home than I should.  I KNOW that leaving the house would be the smarter idea, but I actually enjoy spending time with my husband, so I stay home while we watch TV and I do school work. (I will admit, when golf or basketball are on, I pay little attention, and thus get more work done.)  Sure, I could go into other rooms and find space away from television and whatnot, but that's STILL distracting.  I want to be in the other room, so I'm not focusing on work.
It seems like a never-ending process.  Even summer is full of schoolwork: either taking classes to earn credits and enhancing my knowledge (which I enjoy) or creating new curriculum for the up coming school year (which isn't always as fun).  Maybe this process will get better with age and experience... or I will just stop lying to myself that I'm going to get work done at night, and in turn, stop trucking around my bags full of school work.
There is the option of staying after school to get work done, but quite frankly, after spending all day with students and running around working, all I can think about is leaving.  What I do love, however, are teacher work days!!  We have the ENTIRE day (unless admin determines we should have meetings for the sake of having meetings) to work in our room on our lessons, on cleaning and organizing, and on discussing classes/students with other teachers.  It's actually a sanity-regaining day for me.  If we could have one teacher work day every week, I don't think I would be NEARLY as stressed by this time of year as I usually am.  I sometimes wonder if there's actually enough hours in a day to get done all the things I'm suppose to get done.  And sometimes I wonder if administration has forgotten what teaching is like, since they keep adding more things for us to be responsible for, without taking anything away.
In truth, however, I still love my job and I doubt I will ever do all the things I'm supposed to do... good thing I can handle the occasional tongue-lashing.  I also doubt I will ever really do my work well at home.  It will probably continue to take up space on the couch(es), coffee table, and tray table stands until one evening, when my husband isn't around, I decide to focus... for about an hour... and then give up for something more entertaining.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would get so bored doing schoolwork so often...I'm definitely a "have to do something else at the same time" kind of person so I totally feel yah!!

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