final thoughts

     Tomorrow's the big day.

     The last day I will wake up having not been a teacher. 

     For me, it's a big deal. 

     Typing that first line made my stomach drop a little and some anxiety welled up inside me. I keep it pushed down fairly well. Like the time I went ziplining in Costa Rica. About to allow some man to push me off a platform, wearing essentially an industrial-strength jock strap hooked to a cable, for a half-mile zip, over 400 feet in the air... I keep telling people how excited and confident I felt, all the while thinking, 'Wait, um... I'm pretty sure I will survive this, but it's really different, and I don't know what to expect in terms of how it will feel or go, in what sense I will like it (I'll explain this one later), and there's really no turning back now!' and all these converge to form a knot in my gut. 

     I read once about a man who was about to meet the woman he had been arranged to marry. Asked about her, he responded that he loved her. Befuddled, the interviewer asked "How!??!?" The man responded, "Because I already decided that I love her."

     Before I came to Phoenix, I decided that I liked it. Before I meet people, if I can, I consciously decide I like them. And before I start teaching tomorrow, I've decided that I like it. 

     You'd be surprised how well it works.

     When we rely on our in-the-heat-of-the-moment emotional weather patterns to determine our preferences, we wind up in a confused world where logic does not seem to correlate well with decision making. On-the-spot decisions tend to become stained by the tainted, gelatinous, gooey, gross mess that is the wavering of the mind. Feelings, such as a headache or lack of caffeine, are misappropriated with surroundings, leading to a Pavlovian-style disdain for the innocent bystander or ambiguous situation. 

     All this in mind, I don't want to risk my next 2+ years of thoughts about my job and students, leaving them at the mercy of how I feel on my first day. Because I already know I will be nervous. And I already know I will like teaching. I've decided it. 

Thoughts on Hydration: I drink so much water here. Where does it go? I don't pee much, I don't sweat, but I drank a gallon in an afternoon. Ta-da! It's gone!