1:30pm on Monday, June 28th, 2010 marked the moment I was able to forget about the daily crisis of seven hundred and forty souls, forget about dressing school appropriate, and forget about checking my watch at weekday social functions for the magic hour of 10pm when my clothes would turn into pajamas, my train would become a pumpkin and I would have to rush home if I had any hope of allowing my tattered body a mere 6 hours of sleep. At 1:30pm on June 28th, 2010, I finally completed my second year of teaching and was ready to rejoin the human race and remind myself what it was like to be a 20-something in a big city.
Having already packed up my supplies and cleaned my desk the Friday before, and feeling dedicated to the cause of exchanging my costume as a responsible adult for that of a shit-faced hipster, I texted one of my old college friends, Mr. Drinkwater, and immediately had plans that night for getting tanked. Having successfully secured my means of debauchery, I joined the rest of the faculty in the one air conditioned room in the school: the library. While some of us caught up with coworkers we were unable to connect with during the school year and some of us played card games or Scattegories, all of us participated in the group effort of watching the clock tick down to the end of the schoolyear. Now, I absolutely love my job and my students as do my coworkers but, like everyone else, I was DONE.
1:30 came and so did the final goodbyes, have a nice summers, let's do lunch, and hoots and hollers. One of my fellow teachers, a kind soul who had given me a lift to public transit on numerous occasions, offered my one last ride home and we waxed poetic about the sudden rush of freedom and weight being lifted off our shoulders. It didn't matter at all in this moment that we were untenured and worked at a school that only had 2 months off. It had been a hard year and we were beyond worries of job security or a larger class sizes in the fall. We'd made it through the year and in this moment that was all that mattered.
As I was about to hop aboard the train that would bring back to my house, a sudden thought occured to me. Unlike other teachers, I'd opted to stay employment free this summer (because after all, employment implies responsibility, something I just wasn't in the mood for this summer) and unlike other professions I had the gift of some pretty serious time off. The previous summer, I was so exhausted from my first year of teaching that I had squandered most of my time watching the entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and had spent most of my funds on a last minute scramble to Europe. I let the last of my summer days slip by working on a theatre production and suddenly found myself facing the fall, no less destressed and not so prepared to teach again.
I made a vow to myself at this moment that this summer would be different. I told myself that every hour would be spent doing something worthwhile, whether it's drinking my favorite coffee, practicing my harp, writing, learning graphic design or learning how to relax (although I'm still not sure when I become a person who had to schedule relaxation). Between 1:30pm on June 28th, 2010 and 8:00am August 30th there approximately 1500 hours and 1000 waking hours in which to fill with friends, dancing, drinking, and all the things teachers don't always get to do during the 7200 hours of the school year.
This blog will be a record of these carefree (and productive) hours and also a means of holding myself accountable. And hopefully, when it's late February 2011 and I'm fried from waking up in the dark with four months of school looming in front of me, I can look back over the short archives of this blog and remember that summer vacation exists and that it will happen again, as long as I'm patient. It's a time when I can start being myself again, instead of a role model. It's a time when I can meet new people and start reconnecting with old friends. And in 2010 on June 28th at 1:30pm is when it starts.
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