Can't sleep. Again. This has been a very long week of sleepless nights. Perhaps it's the stress of knowing that in a few days the responsibility for successful development of effective reading and writing skills for 60 young minds will rest solely on my shoulders. I think a big part of it is that I am a night person (possibly problematic considering I'm entering a field where the work day starts at 7). I'm not not a morning person in the typical "I can't function in the morning" way. I don't like getting up at any time of day, but once I'm moving I'm ok. I'm a night person in the sense that I'm at my best after midnight. It's genetic. If you go to the home of almost any person in my family, both immediate and extended, at 1am, someone will be up. At my house, you'll probably find someone awake at least until 2 or 3am. If you've ever gone out with me, you know I won't be happy unless I close down the bar at 4 am and then go somewhere after, even if I closed down the bar the night before too and then woke up at 9 to go to the beach. This is a problem. People think that I just get on a bad sleep schedule because I stay up and then nap, but no, I stay up late no matter what the rest of my day entails. If I'm not in bed or at least in the mindset of going to bed by 10, I'll be up way past midnight. Considering I'll be in class until 9 most nights of the week, I see myself getting about 3 hours of sleep a night.

This is going to be a long year. Like someone else earlier this week, this has been and will continue to be the hardest job work I've ever done. It's possible that in my entire career I've never stayed past 5 (or whatever the mandated leave time is) ever. Yet this week I was in early and there late regularly, and fortunately didn't really mind. I'm also exhausted, and I've barely seen a child. Hanging bulletin board paper is harder than you think; if you get a chance, go back and thank your old teachers for all the decorating they did.