Turning bad social experiences into bad sociological experiments.

After that whole manifesto on how I would wave the flag of equal education for all - even the disengaged and the disaffected - I nearly let myself down on Thursday - the first day of school. It was such a long day. The bureaucrats were working double-time to make my transition from halcyon teacher work-days to hellion students' first day as intolerable as possible. I stayed up too late the night before trying in vain to get my act together. I woke up too early in an attempt to do what I hadn't done the night before. I didn't have time for coffee, and my paperwork and classroom were in disarray.

I tried to use first period, my planning period, to pull myself from the gelatinous, ever-wobbly edge of chaos, to no avail.

Second period - American Lit - was my first class. And my worst class. Here they come - hulking, dim-eyed, mumbling teacher-haters. Slumping into torturously tiny modernist nightmare desks - each different - some wood - some stone - some melamine or something akin to it - all hard and uncomfortable. Eyes rolling like horses trampling through the end of days. Loud, disorderly, unkempt. Just like in a bad movie that all aspiring teachers watch with the false belief that real kids, like movie kids, will suddenly have a change of heart and learn the value of knowledge.

And they hated me. What a blow to my ego. I have come to believe that my charm and wit and good-looks would win over even the most hardened hearts - but, alas, it is not so. Teenagers have some sort of protective coating - not candy - though it is colorful.

In retrospect, it wasn't their lack of enthusiasm that disheartened me. In honesty, it was purely the jab to my self-image. I'm not funny anymore. I'm old.

Anyway, third period the kids were quiet and well-mannered - or were they just dazed and complacent?

Fourth period they sat on the fence between good and evil, teetering precariously, some bright, like young Darth Vaders, pondering the sleek, shiny black masks of the dark force versus the drab brown jackets of the goody-two-shoes.

And by the end of the day I was asking myself, "What have I gotten myself into? I don't want to teach. I haven't signed a contract yet. I don't want to come back tomorrow. God, a whole year! What was I thinking!? Maybe I'll just give them 20 worksheets a day. That'll keep 'em in line. They don't want to learn anyway."

My mentor, the sweetest lady in the world, sat down with me after the faculty meeting, and we talked through the day. It helped, but I was still exhausted and depressed and disillusioned.

I slunk to bed that night. And meditated on the day. Remembered my high hopes the previous night. Remembered something that my darling angel friend Molly once said about a similarly frightful experience - "Just look at it as an opportunity for sociological observation."

Yes! That's it.

I can't fathom not loving knowledge and school and books and writing and learning. I can't wrap my head around it. Yet these people find it loathesome and hideous. Why?

I can use this whole semester as an attempt to gain an understanding of why these particular teenagers hate school. That makes the experience less personal, more scientific. I'll make notes and begin to draw up a thesis. Maybe I'll even learn something!

And, after all I've been through - divorce, childbirth, poverty, hunger, anxiety, isolation - what can a bunch of jaded sixteen year olds do to me? Why should they thwart my plans to create a new world order?! If these are the huddled masses, slack-jawed and querulous, let them do their worst. I'm going to teach somebody, dammit.