The Break

Well, here we are... the second week of Christmas Break (the week that you said you'd use to get organized and get ahead of yourself for the upcoming term). Yeah Right.

Now, there are many who are productively using the break and crossing t's and dotting i's early. The rest of us are as bad as our students when they're given an assignment that's due in two weeks. We wait until the last minute and hope we get it all done. So, what have you been doing? Drinking, shopping, lunch with friends (more drinking), dinner with friends...drinking, sleeping in (due to drinking), more drinking, parties (eating and drinking), folks in from out of town (drinking and stories from back in the day). And what did you tell yourself you would do over the break? Rest, read a good book (menus don't count), here's a good one... work out more, HA! When do you have the time? The only things being worked out are you wrists and biceps from fork lifting and 12 oz. curls. From waking up and feeling like dirt from the night before, the phone rings with a friend on the other end inviting you to lunch or to watch some sporting event on the local pub's t.v.. However, you are doing a lot of sit-ups... sitting up to take some aspirin, sitting up to try to feel human again, sitting up to push yourself away from the table or bar, sitting up to get up from the couch and grab the remote control.

Then you see something out of the corner of your eye. It's your stack of papers and school materials over in the corner. You get up, pick the up and move them somewhere where you can't see them (preferable the closet). You sit back down and you think of your students, even though you you told them that you wouldn't be thinking of them over the break:
    -" Mr. Fletch... you gonna miss us over the break?"
    - " If I start missing you all over the break, it just means I'm not drinking enough."
But you do think of them. You hope they're enjoying themselves and that they're safe. And you thank God that you haven't seen any of them on the news due to anything painful. I then hope that the majority of them spend some Christmas money on some damn school supplies! I can already hear it:
    - " I ain't nobody spendin' Christmas money on school supplies... that's lame!"

But enough of that... Get back to your break and enjoy yourselves. The reality of school will be upon us soon enough.