How Do I Lack Patience with Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...

I love my job. And normally I don't slide into a February funk until February. But this week has tried my patience. In the following ways:

For the love of all that is scholarly, please, please, please follow directions! I used to give benefits of doubts. Times have changed. I am rescinding the benefits.

1. Discuss in your own words means that I will no longer pretend that you know what you're talking about when you copy a paragraph out of the book. I will not sample your buffet of knowledge and choose the concept that appeals to me.

2. Write "true" if the statement is true. If false, write the word that will correct the italicized word to make the statement true. See what's going on here? Each blank will contain either the word "true" or another word. Not 'T's and 'F's. Not words and blanks. Not trues and falses, with the italicized word marked through and a phrase written above it or below it. Not trues and falses, with a word or phrase of your choosing marked through, and more words or phrases written above or below them.

3. You are tardy if you are not in your seat when the bell rings. In your seat. Which is inside the classroom. Not in the doorway. Not in the hall just outside the doorway. Not at the drinking fountain. Not in the bathroom. Entering the room, even if you deposit your giant backpack (which includes everything except your textbook) and then leaving again so as not to be in your seat upon the ringing of the bell, does not negate the tardy. It matters not that you had once crossed the threshold. Standing in various places around the room chatting with your friends does not negate the tardy. Because you are not in your seat, you see, and ready to learn.

4. You can have candy until I find your trash in my room means that candy privileges end when I find your trash in my room. Trash includes, but is not limited to: a Smartie, a Sweet Tart, a scrap of M&Ms wrapper, a scrap of Skittles wrapper, and an empty package from a Sonic toy. Since those items were harvested after ONE CLASS this morning, first hour, and set up as an exhibit to explain the new policy, your days lolling about in the land of Milk Duds and Bit-O-Honey have ended. The fact that a later Do-Gooder took it upon himself to pick up the shrine of garbage and move it twelve inches into the wastebasket does not cancel the ban. Though it might have if somebody in the littering class had thought to pick it up from the floor and desks before exiting.


5. Lunch time is my time, not me-and-you time. Just because you were in my class last year, and have passed me four times a day in the hall since school started without speaking, does not entitle you to barge into my empty classroom at the lunch bell to tell me your are planning to build a robot. I commend your effort. But I do not care to discuss it with you during my 20-minute lunch period, thus keeping you from your class, where you belong until it is your lunch time, since your teacher will expect a note from me if you are tardy.

Alas. So many ways. So little time. I'm sure I will make a quick recovery. The days between now and Christmas break will fly by. But I will be counting like a spinning dial on a gas pump come February.