The hardest job you'll ever love

I got the role of Shelby in Steel Magnolias -- which means I have 260 lines to memorize in the next week. When I get back in January, I'm not only doing this show, I'm also directing Guys and Dolls at the high school, flying to D. C. to help chaperone the kids on the March for Life, going on a missions trip to the poorest area of West Virginia over spring break, teaching five classes, and possibly going to Honduras at the end of the semester.

On that note, how can I possibly sum up the last five months of my life in Georgia thus far? As you know, I've been an inconsistent blogger, at best. The only explanation I can offer is that in my declining years (all twenty-one of them), I've begun to shy away from some of the more flagrant forms of emotional exhibitionism of my salad days. I guess I've just become more aware of the fact that some things are sacred, even in the twenty-first century. I guess I'm changing, in some little, unforeseeable, nearly unnoticeable ways.

In the last week or so, I've written finals, graded finals, posted grades, shipped report cards, and have in some quasi-official capacity or another become at last entitled to the appellation "high school teacher". What have I learned thus far?

It's been busy. Insanely busy. I've barely had time to breathe. I've been, for all intents and purposes, Dougie Howser, Ph. D -- the youngest member of the faculty with the most to learn. I spent a good 50-70 hours a week at the school. I've had parent-teacher conferences. I played Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. I directed a Georgia State High School Association award-winning production of Midsummer Night's Dream, taught The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, and Huck Finn, explored Plymouth Rock with the Pilgrims, wandered in Walden Woods with Thoreau, and learned about the American Dream from Jefferson, Paine, and Patrick Henry. I rolled my eyes at my students' interpretive dances of rafting down the Mississippi and their expository essays about getting an XBox 360 for Christmas. I've stayed up till 4 a.m. chaperoning coed retreats and 2 a.m. making donkey ears for the fall play. I had a whole lot of fun and (hopefully) imparted at least a little bit of knowledge. I listened to woebegone sixteen-year-olds cry to me about their breakups, chaperoned high school dances, sang karaoke with my kids while setting lighting cues for a show, wept at their defeats and rejoiced in their triumphs. I've learned to field intricate moral conundrums like "Is getting drunk a mortal sin?" and "How far is too far?" like a pro. I've made some amazing friendships with my awesome colleagues who continually inspire me to strive for the highest and to continue to touch these kids' lives. I've watched my students buy shoes like mine, make "your mom" jokes because I do, read Gone With the Wind because it's my favorite book, and pick up my facial expressions, favorite vocabulary words, and mannerisms. I've laughed. I've cried. I've learned that whether I notice or not, they're watching and emulating my every move. I've taken some small part in causing starry-eyed faces to light up in amazement over a sudden glint of understanding of Gatsby's green light or Hester's scarlet A. I've had sixteen-year-old boys who would rather be playing Halo and sixteen-year-old girls who would rather be painting their nails stop by my classroom after their finals were already done with to discuss individualism, existentialism, moral theology, Dostoevsky, and their everyday lives -- just because they want to talk to me.

I started this semester praying to be delivered from the pangs of broken hearts and unrequited love, beseeching God, O Divine Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. As a result, I've tried to instill charity in all that I've done, even when it's been at its most insane and hectic, to love, even when there is no return. I've failed, often. I've gotten stressed and cranky and unhappy and mean. But for all the craziness and the spasticness and the 15-hour workdays and the crying students and the irritable parents and the conferences and the red tape and the zany moments, there's a quiet joy underpinning the whole endeavor that I'm not sure, having once tasted, I could live without.

Sure, it has its wretched moments. But I love my colleagues. I love my superiors. I love my students. I love my job. Right now, this is my life, and right now, this is where God wants me to be, right smack-dab in the middle of podunk Fayette County, Georgia, doing what I'm doing. No, I'm not the person I ought to be yet, and I'm not claiming to be, but these kids make me realize anew every day how much I need to be better, for their sake -- but most of all, for my own.