Senioritis

New things are supposed to happen to a person in the Peace Corps. That’s its number two schtick. Things about yourself you predict will change: You will become more patient, open minded, speak another language, flexible, world weary.

Under the heading “World Weary” is the sub-heading Senioritis.

Being a naturally buoyant person, with already a good deal of other world weary characteristics (zero patience for bigotry, zenocentrism etc), it actually never occurred to me to become tired of something you are doing at some point before finishing it. While being here I’ve heard the phrases “I’m done”, “I’m done with this”, “I just wanna be done”, “We have 467 days to go!” many times over by many people.

At first I was all “wow what a lame way to look at stuff!”

Then I was like “wow I wanna burrito with Dr. Pepper”

Now I’m all like “Get me the hell out of this school!”

I’m on the record. I am done with teaching. We have a week and a half left. The other teachers barely checked in in the first place. The kids checked out right before Easter. I survived until about a week ago… There is no point in going.

Then Renata stepped up her teaching game: “I need to be more disciplined with them. Just because I like them does not mean they should get all 10s.” Yes!! Yes! Yes!

And the girls came and we made paper crane mobiles (Jessie East, Faith Whitacre… You’d ooze joy)

He Who Is Most Hateful got himself into a Kiddo headlock courtesy of trying to run circles around the classroom yelling, and stepped up HIS game from “Miss Erika Miss Erika Miss Erika” with punches and thrown objects to “You Mother F****** B****” with weird belly dancing moves and even more disturbing chest flashings on his part… And we were doing so well in our personal Cold War.

And… senioritis. No amount of cute girls for an hour every day after school will make up for being sexually harassed by an 11 year old.

I guess there’s balance?

PS. I butt dialed another volunteer earlier this week… I got a response text message: “Your school sounds like a constant riot.”