Is it worth it?

About a month ago during winter break, Hilary and I were talking about teaching. She's been interested in going in to teaching for a while and now that graduation is close for her, she's started applying more seriously. She told me about her interview for Teach for America. One of the questions they asked her was what she would do if she was in a job where she felt overwhelmed, her class was out of control, her co-workers refused to work with her or help her, and the administration gave her no support at all. She said that in those circumstances she'd probably quit. I think their question was phrased a little differently, but whatever the exact wording was, it raised a lot of red flags for her. Who asks that in an interview? The only people who would are people who expect that to happen, or at least think it might be a possibility. She'd also heard me talking about how hard teaching was, so she asked if it was worth it, if I'd do it again. I told her no. Every veteran teacher I've talked to has always gone on about how important teaching is and how much of a difference you make, but I've never heard one try to dissuade me from teaching. Honestly, I wish a few of them had tried. It's not for everyone. It really isn't. Telling you how much you're needed really obscures away whether or not the job is right for you. It doesn't matter how much you are needed for a job if you're not happy with it. if someone needs advice about teaching, it really doesn't help to say how necessary it is. Yes, we know it's necessary, but what does the job entail? Is it a job I could be happy with? Is it worth devoting years of my life to a difficult profession? I think part of the fear is that if people knew what they were getting in to, there would be far fewer teachers. But why exactly is that a fear? They have always managed to find someone to fill positions. I guess the worry is that they'll find someone awful to fill a teaching position and that will be bad for the kids. In the end, anyone who tells you how important the job is is really trying to look out for the kids. It's an admirable goal, but it's important for the prospective teacher to realize that the advice is not given with their best interests at heart. I think the idea of veteran teachers is that they went through it and it wasn't so bad, or at least the bad part was over with in a year or two and as long as they can get a novice teacher through the first few years with guilt trips about how important the job is, they'll see that it's not so bad also. It's really selfish in a way. I've spoken with Hilary a few times about teaching and I could tell she didn't really know what the job entailed. No one really does until they have to do it themselves. I sure as hell didn't know and it took me even past my student teaching just to begin to start figuring it out. Hilary could become good at teaching eventually if she persevered at it. Frankly, anyone could if they just kept at it for long enough. But I also know with Hilary's temperament just how hard the first few years would be. It's hard for everyone, but I can tell it would definitely be hard for her. She was just starting to figure it out as well. Was it in her best interest to work at getting a credential and then have to go through even more difficulties teaching? Was it in my best interest? For me, I've already spent several years getting my credential and working on teaching, so the line is murkier, but if I knew three year ago what I know today, I'm not so sure I'd be on the same path.

That was my answer a month ago. Since then, things have been a little smoother. I have started to see what being a veteran teacher must be like. When I am no longer high stakes evaluated every year, when I am no longer pink slipped year after year, when I have my routines down, when I've seen all of the students' tricks, when I've gotten good enough to figure out which battles are worth fighting, when I've found which concepts are tricky for students, when I've accrued enough things worth putting on my walls, when I figure out how to grade quickly, as well as all the other things I haven't figured out that I need yet, the job actually has some pretty nice perks. I get a lot of vacation time. I can't be fired. There is always a market for my job. I can wear whatever I want to work. I have a lot of freedom and agency over how I conduct my day-to-day affairs. The job will always be intellectually satisfying and will never get boring. Some of these features are more valuable than others (such as the never being fired one - and all you have to do is put up with the guarantee of being fired for a few years straight), but they are all benefits in some way that wouldn't necessarily be a part of another job. The security that comes with being a veteran teacher is really worth something. I see Steven stress every day about his company getting a bad earnings report one quarter and firing him. I think he stresses a little unnecessarily, but I think most people worry about their jobs at one point or another. A job where you don't have to do that is pretty sweet. Of course, it's not worth it if you're miserable every day of the job, but I've gotten to the point where I'm not miserable every day. Eventually I think I'll be miserable even less. I am at the point where I have the general idea of what I'm supposed to be doing down. Now all I have to do is refine it.

But that brings us back to the point from earlier: is it worth it? Maybe one day I'll forget just how miserable the firsth alf of this year was, but right now it's pretty fresh in my mind. There are a lot of hard realities I've had to face teaching. My classroom management skills were awful. They are still awful, but I'm starting to get the hang of it a little. I've gotten better enough to realize that next year I will still be bad at it. Perhaps the year after that I will begin to be better, but it's still going to take a while for me to set everything up the way I want it. One of the other hard realities I've had to face is that my parents really didn't know a lot about discipline. I told my mom about how one of my students stole some tape from me and I was going to call his parents about it. She said "it's just tape. Let it go." I write a fair amount, but I'm honestly not sure how to put into words how much that flippant little phrase hurt me. It's hard to see someone you respect and have almost put on a pedestal make a mistake, and a serious one, and not even realize they were wrong. I felt like that in the beginning of the year and had to find out the hard way just how wrong that was. It was a very painful lesson, one that left me feeling like crap every day I walked out of that classroom, knowing how powerless I was and how I didn't know what I was doing. But it was a lesson I did learn in the end. I never realized until then that I was treating my students the way I had been raised. My parents left me to figure out what I should and shouldn't do. They didn't really force me to do anything. In some ways, this left me an independent person who had the freedom to choose the right path. In a lot of ways it was a good thing. I always felt like my judgement was good, as I was counted on to make pretty much all of my own decisions about my conduct. But kids are kids. They can't be counted on to make every decision correctly. There are some things that I decided weren't important somewhere along the line that really were in the end. My parents pretty much never made me clean my room. That wasn't important to me and it wasn't a battle they felt like fighting. I know my mom didn't like how messy my room was, but she left me to make my own decisions. She focused on how good I was in school instead. But organization is a skill, a skill you have to learn. Cleanliness is too, and kids can't always be counted on to realize how important it is. As I grow older, I'm starting to realize how bad clutter and mess can get when you have adult sized possessions and (this has been a great horror) papers, many of which are important and need to be saved somewhere.

I don't mean to put the burden or blame on my parents for how I turned out. For the most part, I really like how I turned out, but now that I'm finally out of school and out from under my parents' wing, I'm starting to notice how many important life skills I just don't have. Teaching brought that home to me a little faster than I think it otherwise would have come, but I think I would have figured out eventually that some of the things people have always said are important that I casually brushed off, might actually be important. I'm probably a more thoughtful individual since I've had a chance to realize this for myself instead of just doing as I was told and making my bed or cleaning my room or any of the other things kids are usually ordered to do by their parents, but it's a tough task to learn all these simple things that most people take for granted that you know. I don't really know how to sweep, mop, or vacuum. I'm not sure what a duster is supposed to accomplish (doesn't it just move dust around? How is that cleaner?). The vast array of cleaning utensils boggles my mind. When I first used a Lysol wipe, I thought it was magic. And I could come up with similar lists for cooking as well. I didn't know how to cut veggies, which things cooked the fastest, what temperatures different meats needed to be baked at, how a microplanar is different from a cheese grater (actually I still don't know that one. I have high hopes for figuring it out one day), how to clean a dirty pan, etc. So to tie this ramble back in to my point from earlier, I left for college not knowing all that much outside of what was absolutely necessary for school. I graduated college not a whole lot better in terms of practical skills. I had learned many of the rudimentary skills of cooking, but I was very lucky to have a convenient situation (the coops) and a good friend (Susan) to help me out. But even though I was lacking in all of these basic things, I never thought it was my parents' responsibility or that my mom had done anything less than being a perfect parent. In all honesty, she was an excellent parent in so many ways, but it wasn't until she made that comment about ignoring that student stealing from my desk that I realized she wasn't perfect, that there were things she missed. Then I saw all that struggling and suffering I'd gone through in the past few months because I wasn't prepared for what was awaiting me, and I had an idea of why I wasn't as prepared as I could have been. I almost broke down right there when I heard my mom make a comment consistent with beliefs I used to hold about discipline. It's so hard to shed beliefs you have about the world. You don't question where they came from. As long as they've always worked in your experience they must be fine, and it usually takes a lot of evidence otherwise to prove to yourself that they don't work. I had by that point had months of experience disproving that. And of course, at first you don't know exactly what it is that you're doing wrong, which belief you hold that is clearly not working. It takes a long while to figure it out and another long while to figure out what it is you should be doing differently. So after going through all that and coming to painful conclusions, I saw my mom espousing those same beliefs. She never realized that they were wrong. I saw where my beliefs had come from and I saw that my mom had steered me wrong. I knew from before that there were some things she was misguiding about, but I had never seen her be completely wrong. Since then, I've seen a lot of the ways in which she is fallible. She tries to convince you that she's right instead of just telling you. She doesn't ever tell you you have to do something, so she cajoles and reasons and when she really wants something, she manipulates. My brother's car is getting old and my mom wants him to get a new one, but he wants to keep it until the things is completely unsalvageable. It is getting to be a bit of a wreck, but it does still drive. The door doesn't open, most of the radio and dashboard buttons have fallen off, and it has more than 100,000 miles on it, but it does drive. My mom doesn't want to order Tony around, but she still wants him to do what she wants. She keeps offering arguments for why he should choose to get a new car himself, many of which are completely wrong. She tried the "girls won't like you with a beat up car" front. People do judge you based on what you drive sometimes. A first impression is important. This was her first argument and I think it's the real reason she wants him to stop driving that car. When Tony brushed that off, she moved on to the safety argument. Does she really think the airbags won't go off because the car is old? Or that the seatbelts won't work? That's not exactly the first things to fail. But that's what she was telling Tony when he was driving us around. It's untrue and she doesn't really believe it (though I'm sure she thinks she does), and that's what she said to Tony the whole time we were in the car when last we visited. During dinner, Tony got into a small argument with me. It was nothing big. We fight a lot when we're together actually because he has a very different view of the world and we occasionally butt heads over it. Two days later he called apologizing and was hoping I wasn't upset. I could tell my mom had been harping at him over those two days. He sounded so miserable. I wasn't even mad. That's just how our interactions go sometimes. He needs to get out of that house. I don't know how to tell him he does either. Next time I see him I'll try to bring it up.

When I think about it, a lot of the realizations I've made have been good things. It is important for me to see my mom's flaws as well as her strengths. It is important for me to grow a backbone and get over telling people what to do. I have grown a lot as a person by teaching. I don't know that it was the best way to learn. It certainly wasn't the easiest way, but it might have been the fastest. So again, we come back to "is it worth it?" And whatever answer I come up with to that question, will that still be my answer in a year? Two years? Ten? I don't know if I can answer this question now. One thing I really regret is that I never tried anything else. I never tried going into the job market with no idea what job I wanted or what I'd be required to do if I was hired. I never sent out mass resumes. Frankly, I took the simple path. I honed in on one of the few jobs I was even remotely familiar with and did the appropriate actions to follow through with it. There are millions of jobs out there, many of which I think I would be fine at, but I don't even know they exist. They're the jobs that happen behind the scenes that no one ever hears about, like Susan's. There's no major in college that prepares you for them. I wish I had gone into the "real" job market - the one where you're not set on a particular path in a particular direction by schooling before you're even on the hunt for a job. I wish I could compare teaching to some other job. Steven says all jobs are hard, but you never really understand until you experience it for yourself. I want to experience what another job is like, but it's not really reasonable for me to do that now. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Maybe I can try for a part time job in summer. Until then, I don't know if I can answer whether or not this job is worth it. A lot of the perks, I can't really appreciate without comparison. Maybe the autonomy my job allows isn't important to me but how will I know unless I get a job without much autonomy? Maybe the downsides of teaching outweigh the perks. If that's the case, then it really isn't worth it. Maybe I can't appreciate the perks now because I don't know how awful it would be without them. I do know this: if I had to do it over again, I'd do it different. I really didn't know what I was getting into with teaching. I needed to experience the world more and grow up a little more before even considering it. I wish I had braved the uncertainty and gone hunting for a job right after college. Perhaps one day I will give it a try. Perhaps I'll come back to the teaching profession afterwards. I just feel like right now, I don't have a lot of information and I made choices in my life that left me ill-prepared and ill-informed. Is it worth it? At this point, maybe. Then again, maybe not. I will keep working through the year. I'll give next year a try too. I think a third year would be pretty informative as well, but I'm not ready to think that far ahead. For now I need to put these thoughts on the back burner and deal with the present one day at a time. This is a question I'll revisit periodically, but for right now, I just can't answer it.

Pathways

I'm at a pretty satisfying place in my job right now. I'm far, far, far from being a particularly effective teacher, but I know how to improve now. At first, I really had no idea what I was doing. Everything was new. Each day, I had no idea what to expect or how to react. I'm still blindsided plenty often, but now I have enough of a grip on the day to day stuff that I'm able to improve on the little (yet still very important) things. More importantly, I know what things needs to be improved, and I even have a few ideas on how to improve it.

I was very naive when school first started. Some of the advice someone gave me was to do all my planning for the next week on Thursday night. It makes your Thursday miserable, but the next week runs so much smoother. So I decided I would try to do that. I made it a goal for the year. Ha! After spending egregious hours each night and morning just planning for the very next day, I gave up on that idea. It was really impractical. now that I'm starting to get a little experience, I'm starting to see that that wasn't really the right goal to start off with. At some point, I think I will plan out the next week each Thursday night, but that just doesn't make sense to do right now. Plans change depending on the students and what they understand or don't understand. I change plans mid-lecture half the time, or more commonly, come up with my lecture on the fly. I haven't bothered to prepare my notes for a while now. When I come up with a few examples first, it runs a little smoother I guess, but for the most part, you just have to make up numbers. If it doesn't work out, then they get some experience practicing with fractions. But anyway, planning everything in advance is not really where I need the most help. I come up with stuff just fine the morning of. Today I was a little nervous before class because I didn't know how I was going to fill nearly two hours with something for the students to do. Block days are usually pretty awful because I can't just rely on finishing the notes and getting them to spend the rest of the period practicing. But I did come up with something pretty good: a feedback quiz. They take a quiz (a no pressure, not graded quiz) and then I show the solutions up on the board. Pretty much everyone got them wrong. This is how my tests have always gone. I really haven't been giving them enough feedback in preparation for the tests. The tests used to be their first dose of reality and if you fail that, you're generally so bummed that you're disinclined to see what you got wrong or where you could change. This was really good for the students to assess themselves. It's ironic a little, because they can all check their answers in the back of the book or try the problems during the warm up and get feedback that way, but when I presented this in a different way, by creating a quiet testing environment, all of a sudden, everyone was listening and I heard startled gasps everywhere from people who thought they had it right and were off in some small way. Couldn't they have checked their work before? Couldn't they have asked if they had it right? Couldn't they come in after school for some extra help? The answer is yes to all of those things, but the reality is that they weren't.

The point of that anecdote was that slowly yet surely, I'm starting to try new ideas and refine things. Basically (to tie this all in to the title of the blog), I've built the pathways I needed to teach. It was an incredibly hard battle and very painful at times, but those pathways have been built. Now I'm at the stage where I have to refine. I have the framework and now it's just a matter of filling in the spots I need to fill in. This is why things have been so optimistic lately. Creating a framework is hard, hard stuff, but refining is really satisfying. You can see yourself improving and you finally have results. After the faux quiz today, students were happy. Some were sad that they'd gotten the answers wrong, but I put a real positive spin on it and told them that this meant they knew what they had to work on and wouldn't get it wrong on the test where it really counted. It was nice to see students leaving my classroom happy (and not just happy to leave).

Evolution of teaching

I've written a little about the actual goings-on at Mt Eden lately, but I haven't said too much about how I feel about how things have been going. I haven't known quite how to start this post because, for once it's actually kind of optimistic. I feel like I have a moderate sense of how things are supposed to work and how I am supposed to do things. Actually, it feels very much like Angband just as you were starting to remember all the commands from memory. Less and less is starting to slip by me. I notice when kids are cheating and I've found ways of keeping it from starting in the first place. I held a test today in my algebra 1 and everyone was quiet. Do you understand how huge that was? I never thought I could get that bucking bronco to finally sit still. And it did feel a bit like a wild beast, but I saw all the danger points and kept pressure on all the right spots. I saw Alexis itching to make some sort of noise and disrupt the quiet. I saw Sam turned sideways thinking about looking at another paper or maybe just talking to friends. I saw Taylor whispering and trying to pass it off as talking to herself. And each time I stopped the problem subtly and without losing my cool. Being able to stop the problem was not actually the really cool part- seeing exactly where the problems were going to erupt was the best. I sat there, actually in charge of my classroom, and felt a rush of power like I'd almost never felt before. I was fortunate that I didn't have to talk or anything because I was absolutely giddy with the rush of it. A little part of my brain was telling me "you're really power tripping right now" but it was too nice of a high to clamp down too hard. Honestly, I think I might have been too harsh or done something I regretted if I'd had a chance (like write a referral for something trivial maybe). I never thought of myself as someone who could boss other people around that easily. Frankly, I'm not. I always think to myself, "who am I to be telling you what to do?" and I think that's part of the reason who I've had so much difficulty controlling my class. I second guess myself sometimes. I think 5 months ago before I'd started teaching, I wouldn't have even liked the feeling I felt today forcing that class into submission, but after a couple months of being trampled on and feeling powerless, today felt good. Really good. I felt competent for the first time in a long time. Actually, that's not quite true. I've been feeling competent ever since I came back from winter break. I dreaded returning so much. I lost sleep the last few days of break. And then I came back because I had to. And then I realized it wasn't that bad. Maybe it just took a reset for me to actually notice that things had been getting better. That was the point where everything felt like it turned around. By the end of that week, after I had gotten through it and things still seemed to be running smoothly, I realized I was starting to get the hang of it. Now don't get me wrong- I still have a LOT of refining to do. When I finally got to the point where I could remember the Angband commands, I still died plenty and had to start over. But I know how I'm supposed to respond. It's kind of like playing a logic game and starting to recognize what the patterns are, which are the spots that I need to focus on the most. Or course, this might be all because I haven't covered much in the way of new material since after break. It goes a little smoother perhaps when all you're doing is review. We'll see next week I suppose when the new material starts over again, but class has been running so much as expected (more or less) that I've been in a really good place the last couple of weeks. I'm hoping it will continue as such.


Oh and once quick PS I want to add because I'm tickled pink at how well I handled it: so there's this punk kid Kirby. He's pretty funny actually and I like him well enough even though he makes it plenty clear with some frequency that he hates my guts. He was acting like a total punk and I laid the smackdown something fierce. So there was a red sweep at school that morning during 1st period (that's with campus supervisors going around and citing people wearing red) and then there he was during second (and not the very beginning of second I might add) wearing a solid red shirt. He had obviously brought a red shirt with him to school to put on after 1st period because it got leaked that there would be a red sweep. I made him take it off, even though he was spouting some bullshit about having gotten a warning from the campus supervisors. Even so, I made him take it off, and then he said (as a joke, though one in poor taste) "I'm gonna bomb this school!" Woops! Your bad, Kirby! I spoke with him briefly in private about how I would be reporting that as a mandated reporter and that was not appropriate to say. Seeing him leave the classroom wearing the red shirt I made him take off during class was the icing on the cake. I just have to say that's one suspension I absolutely basked in. And suspended during my final? Double woops! I haven't made up my mind for sure, but I'm fairly disinclined to allow a make up exam.

Who needs admins?

I do. Or more technically, I need one good one. The revolving door of principals at Mt Eden is starting to get out of hand. Yes, we lost the old one. Again. I'm starting to get abandonment issues. Here's the quick rundown:

1st principal: incompetent - fired
2nd principal: came out of retirement, competent, already planned a month and half long cruise
3rd principal: there to stand in place of the 2nd principal while she enjoys her cruise
2nd principal: finally back and we finally see some competent principal-ing - told she had not been out of retirement long enough and would no longer be paid. We found out Friday afternoon via an email saying she would not be in on Monday.
4th principal: one of the assistant principals stepped up- seems to be doing a competent enough job, but is walking into a true mess and is pretty inexperienced. We are currently searching for a permanent replacement, which will lead us to 5 principals in one year.

I never knew how important a principal was until one started actually doing stuff. It was brief, but there was an undeniable change. We actually started enforcing the school rules and suspending students who were troublemakers. There have been red checks (to keep students from wearing red) and tardy sweeps (we get to lock out the tardy ones!). The students all noticed a change and there was a small but noticeable difference in everyone's attitudes. So I was bummed on Friday when I found out our shiny new principal would be leaving. We found out yesterday that the competent assistant principal would be taking over, and so far, she's been very active in trying to keep up the momentum. And we've gotten rid of the incompetent assistant principal. There's some sort of legal action against him for assaulting one of our campus supervisors. He was demonstrating how *not* to hold a kid and gave the campus supe a bunch of bruises. I think it was probably some sort of accident, but I don't care too strongly because I'm glad he's gone. He really did nothing. He barely did the bare minimum. When there were problems he was supposed to deal with, he would lock himself up in his office. When he got students with referrals, absolutely nothing happened. I don't think he even bothered to check the "counseled" and "cautioned" boxes on the referral sheet. Those words have ominous meaning to every teacher at Mt Eden because that was really code for "we said 'don't do that anymore' and sent them away with no repercussions."

So anyway, we're left with pad assistant principal's competent temporary replacement, the good assistant principal standing in for principal for now, and the mediocre assistant principal in the same spot she's always been in. We have an assistant principal vacancy, but it should be filled soon. Until then though, things are going pretty well and running smoothly. Well, not exactly smoothly. It's a long uphill battle to turn this school around from the horrible condition it's gotten into. We still have daily fights, which I am happily shielded from, being out in the portables. I walked onto campus for a short time immediately after school (I'm almost never on the main campus during heavily populated student times) and got to see another fight today, but the difference this time is that I saw all of our admins outside dealing with it and several campus supervisors chasing down students and catching them. They're really quite fast. I think the whole thing diffused fairly quickly. They dealt very efficiently with another problem yesterday or Monday involving students from another school trying to get onto our campus and start something. I think the details are supposed to be confidential, but the students were really in danger and we dealt with it before there was any real threat. So hooray!

So things are improving a bunch at work. There's still all kinds of chaos, but everywhere it feels like improvement. Overall, it's a pretty good feeling, I gotta say.

Twilight

After tearing through every book in the Twilight series as fast as I could get my hands on it, I found myself wondering what I liked about them and the answer was more complex than I realized. I mean, the books are bad. They are extremely trashy and fairly predictable. From any realistic point of view, they ought to be utter crap. And yet I read them feverishly, even re-reading some of the juicier bits. Even though they may not be artfully crafted masterpieces of words, Stephenie Meyer must be delivering something that I as a reader crave in order to get that response. I've thought about it a little and I have an idea, but the whole thing is still a little fuzzy, and nothing clears up fuzz like a good blogging, so here goes.

I think the most important part of Twilight's appeal is Bella and what she has. She has a hot, rich, obsessively dedicated boyfriend whose entire existence is wrapped up in her every thought. Let's not forget how strong and competent this boyfriend is and his many talents. Then she has a second powerful boy with another overwhelming love of her. She is also intelligent (the facts don't really support this because she's pretty stupid most of the time, but she is portrayed as such through Meyer's descriptions) and knows more than anyone else around her about what's really going on (she sees things others don't notice at all and figures out enough to be suspicious even without inexplicable car accidents). Furthermore, she is mysterious and unfathomable to Edward in a way that no one else is. She is also tough, albeit in a very specific way. She doesn't complain at all- she suffers fairly frequently over the course of the book, but it's never that big of a deal to her. Her own problems are always less important to her than the problems of others in her life. So she is actually very strong because nothing can affect her, and many horrible things try. It is only for the sake of others that she ever worries. Even though she is often described as frail and prone to accidents, the important part that subtly underlies it all is that she can endure pretty much anything, thus making her one of the strongest characters. Edward does his share of enduring also, but it's pretty much always for her sake. The power and control goes back to her in the end. Of course this sends a pretty clear (and pretty distressing) message about appropriate outlets for feminine strength (we're the best at taking it with a smile while our men deal with the actual threats), but the fact remains that her strength is played up quite a bit and when the reader associates with Bella, they associate with this strong aspect of her.

It's really very important for Bella to have some aspect of her that is strong. Otherwise she really would be pathetic. She is constantly getting into trouble and having to be rescued. But that's part of the appeal as well. Everyone wants to be taken care of. Everyone wants someone looking out for them and making sure no harm befalls them. It's especially nice when the people looking out for you are superpowered. There isn't a much better rush than testing the limits of your strength and finding that you're tougher than whatever would try to hurt you. Meyer keeps coming up with bigger and bigger threats so as to showcase just how powerful Bella's protectors are. Starting with the first book, her threats begin with mundane car accidents, a trivial thing for Edward to protect her from. Then we move on bigger game and have the threat be another vampire, which her protectors (yes her protectors multiply at every stage- by this point the has the whole Cullen family and not just Edward) vanquish without too much difficulty. Then she moves on to a new set of protectors, a pack of werewolves who protect her pretty handily from Laurent (another single vampire) and Victoria, also just one vampire, but a pretty cunning one gunning for her head alone and not just wanton violence. Then a couple of her old protectors keep her safe from an organization of super vampires (albeit through smooth talking rather than force). *Warning- now entering book three spoilers!* We have to keep raising the bar to push Bella's tolerance for danger even farther, so next we face off against a vampire army, one with super strong vampires as well. We also discover that one of her protectors is stronger than we realized since Jasper has his army background. As her threats expand, so do her defenders. Before the Cullens and werewolves were separate protectors and now we get to see them joining their might together (for her sake of course) and allowing them to easily win with no casualties. Every threat in this universe is huge, but each one is overcome without any cost whatsoever- not one casualty. Well there was one injury in book 3, but since everyone has healing out the wazoo, it's more of a way to showcase everyone's worrying and less of an actual loss. Meyer may be predictable, but there is talent there, to make meaningless threat after meaningless threat actually come off as worrisome to the reader. *(I don't think there are any explicit book 4 spoilers below, but Steven might want to stop reading just in case. I make some guesses about things beyond book 4, which kind of tells you a little about how it ends.)* Too many more of these books and people would start to get wise. You really have to kill off a character every once in a while to have threats mean anything, but these books aren't about actual loss or sadness. Bella has only desirable things. The whole series falls apart if she has to deal with any real loss or sadness beyond her usual emo whininess. No one wants to live vicariously through someone actually dealing with real problems and their ramifications. If the series kept going I imagine we'd see a werewolf no one really cares about get played up a bunch and then killed off. Perhaps Seth. He's come into his own a little in book 4 and it's just too sad to kill off Leah. Besides it would be tainted with people feeling kind of happy she was gone. Seth would get a true heroes death with all the somber memorial needed. Bella would mourn for a while of course, but we wouldn't waste too many words on it. And it would probably bring everyone closer together somehow. I'm guessing he'd take the bullet for a vampire that we actually care about. But enough supposition. The series could stand to have a little more finality, but I don't think that's coming any time too soon. Meyer will take a break and bathe in her money for a little while and then maybe we'll start up the series again a century or two in the future when they deal with Volturi once and for all. If that book ever does come to exist, it will be the crappy bastard child of all the rest. All that juicy romance is more or less finalized by this point, which was really what the series was about all along. The action is more about highlighting that romance, providing a backdrop where we can see through their concern how much everyone cares about everyone else. I say enough supposition, but then there I go again. Well, it is about rambling after all.

*No more spoilers!*

Let's backtrack a little to the things Bella has: strength (of a sort), high desirability, hotties fighting over her tooth and nail, a sexy, rich, powerful boyfriend who would do anything in his power to keep her safe and happy, ... well that's most of it, though there's a little more too. But basically, she is blessed with all the things average people desire. This plays a big role in tapping into the readers' fantasies, but another key part of the appeal is Bella's treatment of all these things: she doesn't want them or realize they exist for the most part. She doesn't want a protector to put themselves in danger over her. This helps showcase her dubious strength. She can handle the danger (you know, because she's tough and all), but not the thought of losing a loved one. Fair enough really. That would be real loss and she's not exactly equipped to deal with that. Neither is the reader. We read these books to go to a happy, unrealistic place. If all of a sudden the characters had to deal with real pain it would leave a pretty unsavory taste in our mouths. But back to what she doesn't want- she's the object of desire of basically every guy in the school (at least every one that warrants a name), but not only does she not want to date them, she wishes they weren't even interested at all. Now that is the ultimate rejection right there. Not only am I too good to date you, I'm too good to even want to deal with your attraction. Of course as the reader, we love the idea of people falling over themselves to ask us out. Even in a happy relationship like I am, it would at the very least be flattering. We all want what Bella has, but we're often don't want to appear that we want it. For example, a lot of women (and perhaps some men as well, though I can't speak for them as much), want to get married and have a beautiful over the top wedding where they are the center of everyone's attention. Of course, you don't want to bring that up so much. You don't want to be one of those women- the ones who are desperate to be married because they can't stand to be alone and barely even care who it's with as long as someone will take them. It's basically the female version of the nice guy tm. It's not really appropriate to be thinking about marriage before there's a guy involved (you'll be that woman), but a lot of women do. The whole idea of marriage is pretty appealing to a lot of people. To be frank, I never thought about it that much, but now that I've gone through a wedding and actually have had to think about it, I can really see the appeal. It was pretty wonderful, all told. Everyone wants to have a wonderful moment like that. So we wish for it, but we have to be secret about it so we don't look like a desperate harpy. Bella has marriage thrust upon her, and she actively doesn't want it, so she definitely doesn't suffer from just-get-me-hitched-no-matter-what syndrome. But she still gets to experience it, an over the top excessive version of it, I might add. She gets all the secret desires we want without looking like she wants it. We get to enjoy all these things without having to admit that we want them. Because she's uncomfortable or miserable, we're able to mask our secret joy at the way things have played out. She has a million protectors going out of their way to keep her safe and protected. Everyone wants that. But you can't really ask someone to sacrifice for you. Well, sure you can, but then you're a burden. You don't want to be a burden dragging them down. And quite frankly, Bella is the biggest burden literature has seen in years, but because everyone is volunteering to go out of their way, despite her repeated requests for them not to, she can't really be held to blame. Everyone wants to be protected, but no one wants to be a burden or to feel weak. Bella gets all the benefits of protection without having to feel weak because she dislikes the protection and tries to avoid it, often trying to escape or somehow shield her protectors (usually she shields them emotionally somehow by not expressing how much pain she's in- which she can totally handle because she's tough). So while Bella gives us that feeling of being protected while shielding us from the negative associations of weakness or burden by trying to avoid being protected. So we, as the reader, get it all- protection without weakness.

This is what makes Twilight so successful. It has a main character who has everything people secretly want and feel guilty about wanting. She's got a rich handsome boyfriend, which she says she wishes he wasn't rich or hot so that it would even the playing field between them. So score for the reader- a rich, hot, devoted boyfriend who lavishes them with gifts and we don't have to feel guilty about being a gold digger or shallow, even as we appreciate these things, because these aren't the reasons they're together. We completely eradicate the guilt because these desirable things are seen as negatives by Bella that she'd do without if she could. That's where the desires of the writer differs from the desires of the characters. Meyer wants Bella to have all of these things that all people secretly want. Moreover, Meyer wants her to *not* want them because everybody feels a little guilty about all of those desires and feels like they shouldn't want them, so they want a character who doesn't and yet still has all these wonderful things fall at her feet.

So that is the primary appeal of Twilight. There are other layers of appeal where it's fun to poke holes in Stephenie Meyer's bad writing or to laugh at how silly or predictable most of it is or where you get to see crazy hot people (half of them topless) during the Twilight movies, but that's the real reason the book have sucked in so many people. Most of the other stuff where it's fun to make fun of Twilight is really just to mask that it struck a chord. Making fun of it is certainly fun too, but I generally don't go out of my way to watch bad things just to make fun of them. Really bad things may attain some level of cult following, but they never get as popular as Twilight. We're in it for the guilt free romance. As long as that gets across, it doesn't really matter how crappy the writing is or how unrealistic the situations are. It'll still hit home. And make Stephenie Meyer millions of dollars.

Blogging again!

I have been itching to blog for days, maybe even weeks. I started getting the idea in my head for a blog post a while ago, but then things were busy at school. Then things calmed down, but the internet cut out. I have been itching to write for some time now. But internet is back (joy!)! That means I can blog and write freely! Yay! Actually, these first few hours of having internet back after being without for about a week have been delightful. I thought it might be fun to catalog how that went.

1st: checked email
Or at least part of it. I'm still sifting through the hundred plus emails I got that weren't quite important enough to spend time dealing with at work.

2nd: calendar
Some of the stuff in my email prompted me to go to my calendar to see what I have planned and perhaps plan a few new things.

3rd: bank website
I've been a little stressed about not paying my bills lately.

4th: oots
After I had opened the window for my bank, but before I even typed in the url, I remembered my webcomics. I got pretty excited about it too since I hadn't checked for over a week and I was hoping for more than 1 new oots. Turns out that was a mistake, but at least there was one new one.

5th: xkcd
Not actually blocked at my work (unlike oots), but I tend to check all my webcomics together. This one had several updates to check. You can always count on Randall Monroe.

6th: youtube
To watch a cat jump into a box. Because xkcd reminded me that it existed. And because I could. Fuck yeah!

7th: bank website (for reals this time)
Time to actually type in that url and actually pay my bills. Enough dicking around- time to work.

8th: hulu
That period of work turned out to be very fast. Yay for dollhouse!

9th: investigating locksmith
I did actually have chores to do involving the internet.

10th: facebook
I have so many messages, but I don't want to check any of them. I looked at comment someone made on a picture of me and that's about it. I really did this more because I could than because I particularly want to be on facebook. It's like the youtube tab all over again.

11th: blogger
And now we have come full circle. I kind of want to keep writing because I did have posts in mind before the internet cut out, but I think I'm good for now. I have other things I want to do, some of them not involving the internet (gasp!).

The dangers of min-maxing

In pretty much every rpg ever made, the obvious strategy is min-maxing. You choose what you want to be and then you decide which stats matter to you and which stats do not. The stats that matter, you max out. The stats that don't matter, you start with them low and they stay low the whole time you play. If it ever becomes inconvenient for them to be outrageously low, you get them marginally higher to below average levels (the least you can get away with), but never enough to be well rounded. Really it's the only sensible way to play. The most interesting abilities come from specialists, not jacks-of-all-trades. This is true outside of the video game market as well. Specialists are the highest paid. People get paid more depending on how many years they've worked at a company. And honestly, specialists are just in higher demand. Veterans simply perform tasks better, not to mention they are often far scarcer than your average employee.

At some point at an early age, I decided to min max in my life as well. I decided that certain things were important and certain things were not. School was important. Sports was not. Understanding people was important. Cleanliness was not. (which is not to say that I understand people perfectly- simply that I've spent a lot of time trying to) In everything in my life, I do not like to do things by halves. When I turn my attention towards something, I focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. When I was playing Angband, I sometimes forgot to eat. When I decide to start something, I usually see it through, and do more than see it through- I try to become an expert. I try to max out and be the best at whatever I try to do and if some other things fall by the wayside, it's not a big deal because those things were never important to me.

What a horrible reality check teaching has been then. It turns out some of those things that never mattered to me are actually a really big deal. I mean a really big deal. Having a messy classroom - a big deal. Apparently it means I have a poor work environment where people can't get motivated. And the truth is, it has only a negligible effect on me. In reality it's far cleaner than the filth I live in. But it does make a difference to the students. Who wants to come to a graffitied room with the walls bare or in disarray and actually learn there? There are some students who work through that just fine. I would have been one of them. But there are a lot of students who can't work through that because environment does matter.

Another problem is organization, both for myself and the students. I've never been terribly organized. I leave things lying around and then they get lost of forgotten, slip through the cracks. I need to get myself organized and them too. If they are disorganized, they can't learn.

These are all things that I wrote off as not essential when I was a student. No one ever made me be organized. No one ever made me clean my room. And they certainly weren't things I considered important enough to do on my own. Now I am faced with developing a skill set that has been left largely untouched my whole life. The first year of teaching is always challenging, but now I am faced with the additional challenge of learning how to teach while learning how to decorate, how to keep track of a million and one different things, how to discipline, etc. When I first became interested in teaching, one of the reasons I thought it would be a good idea was because I thought I had most of the skills required. I know math inside and out. I am pretty patient (turns out that's kind of a bad skill set to have since it means I don't get angry fast enough to discipline the kids until they've already gotten a little nuts). I'm fine in front of groups and I know how to put together a presentation (this one has turned out to be pretty useful). But the reality of it all is that that is only one small fraction of what it means to be a teacher. Had I known when I first started some of what was required and some of the skills that are important to teaching, I would never have gotten started. As it is, I have to at finish out the year, so it's time to bring some skills marginally up to below average levels. The whole process is extremely embittering as I spend my own money buying decorations and waste my time deciding what would look nice just to get myself at passable levels for my job. Because right now I fail. I could tell the principal when she evaluated me was trying to find some way to give me a passing score, but the truth is that I fail. Suddenly my min maxing is turned against me. It makes me so angry because I have invested a lot of time into being the best at the things at which I excel. But that level of mathematical knowledge isn't really necessary to do the job. Straight As aren't required to get you hired as a teacher. That highly desirable skill set that very few people have isn't doing me a lick of good because I don't have the far more common basic skills that every person with any sense spent some time developing as a kid. I don't even need the advanced mathematics that I always thought was important. I'm a specialist who's been plunged into an environment that requires a broad set of skills, far broader than anything I'm used to. It's unpleasant and uncomfortable and it feels like a waste. I hate it. I wish I could go back to my narrow little world where the work was hard but it was work I knew how to navigate. Every challenge was a puzzle that might take me a while, but in the end I could solve. Here I can't solve the puzzles and most of the time I don't even know how to start. On the rare occasions that I do know how to start, I find myself embittered at what that even means. Steven says it's good to be well rounded, but I can't help but feel like I trained my whole life for a sprint only to be placed in a triathlon without realizing it. Some of the skills transfer over a little, but most of the time, I'm out of my element. Everyone keeps trying to convince me that this is the job for me. My mom always tells me that I'm "meant for teaching" and that I'm good at what I do. Her ignorance and trying to convince her otherwise is a constant thorn in my side. Steven keeps telling me that all jobs are hard. At least he didn't work his ass off to be a computer programmer only to land a job where programming isn't that important.

This whole thing is just getting me upset. I'm going to go play some logic puzzles and further develop that skill set that I don't need.