This was the first week of classes and the first week in the new high school building at Starfleet Academy. The actual, physical move was complete in time for school to begin, but the mental/emotional move wasn’t quite done yet. Probably it couldn’t be done until we actually started teaching in the new building anyway, but it was a strange week, especially the first day. As in a nightmare, I walked down unfamiliar hallways populated with both strange and familiar people–but I hadn’t seen many of the familiar people in a while, and they had changed–some of them were taller, some of them had different-colored hair, or older faces. I reached to turn on the sink in the faculty room and there were no handles and no faucet. I opened doors into the wrong rooms; I reached for objects that weren’t there.
I wasn’t scared; I knew it wasn’t a nightmare. I was joyful and amazed, mostly, to be there, in these lovely new facilities, with so many people I care about. I was happy knowing the Snork Maiden was next door, finding her way around the old high school which is now the middle school, and that she’d trotted off to deck out her locker and find her homeroom with hardly a backward glance.
It was, however, exhausting. I was aware of all those tasks that normally run in the background of my brain–this week they were eating up megabytes of RAM because I could take nothing for granted (where can I get a drink of water? a ream of paper? how long will it take me to get to this meeting?). Meanwhile, the students were asking questions I couldn’t answer confidently (where are the art rooms? can we eat here? is this locker number on this floor?).
It was a great week. I am excited to go back on Monday.
Posted by What Now? on September 20, 2011 at 10:17 pm
I was thinking about how exhausting it is to have everything be new as I was talking with my two new colleagues and also with my former colleague who’s gone to a new school. Your new building isn’t quite a new job, but it has some of the daily exhaustions. Hang in there!