You know those days when you have the flu, you're swamped with homework, and your basement floods with toilet water?
Yeah, January got me very well acquainted with those days.
After our basement flooded (the first time) we were unable to use any of the water in our house: no showers, no drinking, and absolutely no flushing. We spent a miserable weekend running to neighbors' and relatives' houses, begging to use their toilets. Many plumbers came to our house and tried to fix the problem, but the basement flooded three times in a single weekend before we finally found the clog. (My brother apparently flushed a ball-point pen a few weeks back.)
Thus, I arrived home one day to find my entire yard upended.
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| So much for having grass next year. |
It was a rather apt metaphor for the entire month of January for me.
But let us not linger on the misery. There were many good things that happened during January. For instance, my English Education field experience. I spent every morning for three weeks at Maple Mountain High School, acting sort of like a new apprentice. I observed classrooms, made copies of assignments, created decorations, designed lesson plans, and even got to teach on a few occasions. It was a lot of fun, honestly.
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| Maple Mountain doesn't like my old high school very much. This is a poster from their school, in which they seem to think a Golden Eagle could eat a Red Devil. It was very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut when things like this happened. |
The only downside was that after a morning of feeling like a professional teacher, I had to go back to BYU and play the student again. It was jarring and uncomfortable, especially because I kept falling behind in my other classes because I was so preoccupied with teaching high school. I am normally a very good student, so realizing that I've slipped into being a terrible student has been a bit of an identity crisis for me.
It's odd, really. I've been depriving myself of sleep, starving myself, and driving myself nearly to a psychotic breakdown trying to get all of my homework done. Yet I still feel like I have made no progress. This is the part of college that I hate.
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| I found this magical box in the Joseph Smith Building. Perhaps there is hope yet. |
And so, I bid January farewell with a swift kick. If it had a grave, I would spit on it.
February, let's try to be friends, alright?
