Last night I was going to write about what an awful day I was expecting today to be. But then I woke up on time this morning. And my toothache and swollen gums were gone*. And it was cold enough to wear my new cloak-blanket and a scarf. And my afternoon lesson called to cancel. And Wendy brought me bread she’d made. And I finished my SAT question-writing assignment on time. And I had enough time to prep for the first session of my new LSAT class, which wasn’t a total disaster. I think they learned some stuff, and we only got out *twenty* minutes early this time (my classes usually run WAY short).

All in all, not so bad. Stressful? YES. Horrible? No. I even had a pretty snowflake cookie. Yes, from Starbucks. Yes, it cost, like, a buck-fifty. Shut up. It was a pretty cookie.

Okay, one last potty walk, then sleepytime. Gonna freeze tonight. Wait wait [checks weather site]…nope, not yet. Still 34.

P.S. Sammy-Sam is so preciously tiny that I want to eat him all up. One big bite.

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*To be precise, my gums were still there. The swelling was gone, though.

While many of you are enjoying (most of) the week off from school or work or whatever it is that you do, I’m working overtime. Such is the life of a tutor. All of my students, now that they’re out of school, want to schedule extra lessons this week.

I ruled out lessons on Thanksgiving Day (not that anyone actually asked to schedule then), but I’ve got three lessons on Wednesday and one on Friday. When I flip my planner to the page for this week, it throws back a screen of blue (the color I use for private tutoring) with one tiny white spot on Thursday and a tiny green spot today, when I taught my LSAT class.

Yup, poor poor me. Everybody cry for Natalie. My brother’s home from school, and my cousin’s come to visit, and I don’t get to hang out and play games with them until Thanksgiving morning. Boo hoo. On a positive note, eight lessons in five days adds up to around $300 (including mileage), which would be handy to have around, what with Christmas coming and all.

It doesn’t feel much like the holidays, but I’m sure those mashed potatoes will taste just as yummy as ever. At least I can say with some bit of confidence than I’m a good sight better off now than I was at this time last year, or the year before that, during both of which I spent Thanksgiving at school and sat around thinking about how much fun it was to be failing everything (last year) or nearly failing everything (the year before).

In summary, meh. Could be worse.

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* There are probably no more than twenty or thirty people in the world who know off the tops of their heads where this comes from. But (1) it makes me giggle inside and (2) all the ‘real’ titles I thought of sounded dumb.

Did I mention that I’m an LSAT teacher? I don’t think I did. But I am—I’ve been teaching a class in Clear Lake for two weeks now. Our third lesson was tonight.

I heart the LSAT. Really I do. I love it even more than I love the SAT, I think, which is saying a lot. The LSAT, for those not-in-the-know, is the test people take to get into law school. It doesn’t test any specific subject matter, but rather general logic skills: reading comprehension, finding flaws in arguments, working out formal logic problems, things like that. Seriously, it’s a riot.

Officially, I don’t think I’m allowed to teach this class. When I auditioned to be a teacher/tutor last summer, I said I wanted to teach both SAT and LSAT, but they said I couldn’t teach LSAT until I’d finished my undergrad. But now we’re short an LSAT teacher, and all my SAT classes are finished, so…presto! And now I teach LSAT.

I was worried at first about how the students would react to being taught by someone younger than they are (or the same age, at best), but the adult students show me more respect than my SAT kids. They know that I’ve never been to law school, taken the real test, or even graduated college, but they also know that I am really good at taking the LSAT, and that I’m there to help them. It rocks.

The difference, I’m sure, is that everyone in the LSAT class is there because they want improve their scores and are willing to work to get there. Most of the SAT students are forced into taking the class by their parents. Some of them do pay attention and put in a good effort, but in every lesson I have to contend with the fact that half of the students would rather be somewhere else (if they are not, in fact, already somewhere else).

The older students do their homework, participate in class, ask good questions, and all the other things that make my job seem less like work and more like happyfun learningtime. I love it!

One thing they’re surprisingly *not* better at than high schoolers is showing up to class on time. At 6:00 this evening, when class was supposed to start, only one student (out of nine) was there. The rest trickled in between 6:02 and 6:30*. I guess lateness is something you don’t grow out of, then. Damn. Damn damn damn.**

The lessons themselves are going swimmingly—I honestly couldn’t be happier. I became a tad discouraged when the first one was a little rough and didn’t flow well. I kept losing my train of thought and having to look back at my book to remember the next point I was going to make. But the second and third lessons? Golden. I knew all their names, I drew diagrams on the board in an order that made sense, I could explain every problem in more than one way…all those things teachers are supposed to do. It was lovely.

After class on Monday I told Wendy how thrilled I was that it had gone well, and she was like, “You should really be a teacher. Seriously.”*** And dude, I should. I want to teach. I need to teach. I need to teach people who want to learn—that’s the hard part, maybe. Or maybe I can take people who don’t want to learn and *make* them want to learn and then I’ll feel all warm and fuzzy inside and then of course I’ll cry when they walk across the stage at graduation, looking forward to hearing of their myriad successes, especially that one kid whom the dark side of suburban life had trodden nearly into the ground who had come thisclose to dropping out in tenth grade but was now on his way to an Ivy League with a full ride and had promised me he’d be a teacher someday, too, as soon as he got out of the Peace Corps, as the music swells around the teary-but-exultant well-wishers crowded into the tiny gymnasium…and fade to black. Or maybe I’m being an idealistic twit.

The point is, I’m not a physicist, and I never will be. I could *teach* physics, but if I had to *do* physics for the rest of my life, I’d throw myself off a bridge. The same goes for math: for me, math is a hobby, not a career. There are more important things in life.

When I was younger (and by younger I mean anywhere from 8 to 15), I always thought I would be famous when I grew up. Famous like Einstein.**** After all, from every direction I heard people telling me I was sooooooo smart and sooooooo special and when I grew up I would of course be a brain surgeon, right? Or maybe a rocket scientist? Probably a rocket scientist, since I could solve those math problems so fast.

In high school I entered (and won) bunches of math competitions, and I had a blast doing it. Math competitions and Quiz Bowl were the highlights of those four years—I loved competing, and I loved a good challenge.

But when I got to college, the math got hard. And the physics got hard. And even the chemistry got hard. But I’m soooooo smart, right? This should be no problem. This is what I love. In reality…not so much. Maybe I could do the work, and maybe I couldn’t, but I didn’t want to. I still don’t. In an abstract, theoretical way, I do, and there are times when I catch just a glimpse of some striking mathematical idea, the pure, overwhelming beauty of which makes me think for a moment that it might all be worth it, but looking at those equations day after day after day is enough to make me want to tear my hair out.

I’ve felt guilty about this, as though I’m not fulfilling my purpose in life. If there are math problems to be solved, and I’m good at math, isn’t it then my *duty* to solve them? In my time off, though, I’ve learned a few things:

1. I need to get over myself. I’m not Einstein, or Fermat, or Euler, or who-the-hell-ever. The important problems will get solved whether I work on them or not.
2. I don’t owe the world anything. I’m reminded of what Dean Noda told me right before I left school: “Don’t be a slave to your talent.” I will do what makes me happy, and if I happen to be good at it, so much the better.
3. It doesn’t matter how famous I am after I’m dead; I won’t be around to enjoy it. Life is about the here and now. Period.

I don’t know what this means my life will look like, specifically, in the long term, but I do know that it’s getting mighty close to registration time for spring semester. Fuckin’ A. I’m almost positive I want to do an off-campus major, which’ll be a bitch to set up from 1500 miles away.

For now, though, life is good. It would be even better with more ice cream in it. Also, more avocados pleasethankyou.

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* One thing I like about the LSAT classes is that we start every class period with a practice test section. That way, when students are late, they aren’t behind on the actual lesson.
** I know, I know, I shouldn’t be defeatist. I’ll keep fighting the lateness, I promise. I’ll punch it right in the nose.
*** Here I’m boiling down maybe an hour of conversation to its essence. I remember this being the jist of it.
**** Yes, I do have a rather overblown opinion of myself. You were expecting…?

I’m feeling better than I was yesterday. This morning was awful, though. It took me almost four hours to get out of bed, then two more to get to the office. I cancelled all my morning appointments, which made me feel a little better.

There was only one thing I absolutely HAD to do today: get to my new class on time. I was going to get there fifteen minutes ahead of time, but I left fifteen minutes late, which would have been bad, but not terrible…except that I made a very bad traffic decision and lost ten more minutes. (Memo to the rest of Houston: What are you all doing on the West Loop at 3:00 in the afternoon? Go back to work and wait for rush hour; I have places to go.)

I was beating myself up about it pretty badly on the way there, and with good reason. If you only have one appointment to get to all day, and it’s in the afternoon, and you’re twenty-one years old, you have to be rather incompetent to screw that up. Hi, I’m Natalie. I’m always late to things. It’s the single biggest stressor in my life (besides the whole mortality thing). Nice to meet you.

Anyway, I taught the class, and whoo boy, were they ever a handful. They rather reminded me of this class, actually—half giggly and/or smart-assy, the other half rolling their eyes at the first half and wishing we could get on with the learning already. They finally calmed down a wee bit near the end of the class, and I left feeling happy. It was mostly adrenaline, I’m sure—trying to keep a class of high-schoolers under control is at least twelve times as energizing as lying on the couch wishing the world would go away and leave me alone.

Oh, and then when I got home I found waiting for me two packages of fun things which cheered me up and which I will show you later.

So for most of the day I did bad things and felt bad, then I did a very bad thing and felt very bad, then I did some good things and felt good, then I got packages. Hence the five.

I don’t feel like paragraphs. A list, in vaguely chronological order:

1. A long, complicated dream in which I was nearly run over by a train, nearly crushed between two steel beams wielded by angry construction workers, and nearly killed in a head-on spaceship collision. I was leading a team of girls who suddenly ganged up on me and mutinied, so I tried to join a commune, but I picked a blue flower and no one wanted to be my friend any more. I tried racing ice-carts (no, I don’t know what they are either), but I missed my exit, and everyone made fun of me because I didn’t know how to get to Wisconsin. Then I was a black man searching through a haunted house for bits of magazine cutouts that I could put together to solve a puzzle, but before I found them all a mafioso in an alligator suit shot me for being gay. I woke up when I was bleeding, but not quite dead yet. This was around 4 in the morning.
2. I woke up for real at 9:something when Wendy called to ask where my timesheet was. Hooray, I’ve neglected to do something important. Again.
3. Had things to do, but spent most of the morning obsessing over things I SHOULD NOT be obsessing over because I’ve DONE this before and I KNOW where it goes and it’s NOT PRETTY. Stop it stop it stop it.
4. The healthiest thing I ate today was a cup of yogurt. The second healthiest was a bag of fruit snacks.
5. Today’s Narnia class was nearly useless. The only thing I learned is that I become more defensive than I expected I would when “secular academia” is dismissed off-hand as a tyrannical, monolithic, closed-minded institution.
6. Having left class ten minutes late, I took a “shortcut” to make up the time, only to get my ass handed to me by traffic. I lost fifteen extra minutes trying to get around four exits of 59 and ended up *twenty* minutes late to my Kingwood class. I clawed my own arm hard enough to draw teeny tiny drops of blood. You might find this hard to believe, but I HATE being late to things. With a passion. It makes my chest twist up in knots.
7. Made a girl cry in class today. Not boo-hooing—I don’t think anyone else noticed—but still, I felt guilty. The reason won’t make sense unless you know a lot about the course to begin with, so I won’t bother trying to explain it, but this is the second time one of my students has cried during this particular lesson. I know what the problem is, but I haven’t found a way around it yet, so I always dread teaching it. I’m teaching the same lesson again tomorrow to 17 students I haven’t yet met. Fan-fucking-tastic.
8. The good thing about being able to switch into perky-fun teacher mode at the drop of a hat is that I can forget about the rest of the world for a few hours and concentrate all my energy on teaching. The bad thing is that when I snap back out of it, the weight of the real world seems extra-burdensome in comparison. It’s like Minesweeper, but slightly more fulfilling.
9. My entire life these last few days (weeks?) has been one big existentialist crisis. All of a sudden I find myself constantly reminded that one day I will DIE and then I will NOT EXIST and everything will be OVER and the world is RANDOM and MEANINGLESS and ARBITRARY and there are so many things that I don’t understand but none of it even MATTERS because it’s NOT REAL it’s all pretend and how can everyone go on living their lives and not be CRUSHED by the EMPTINESS of it all. I dare say there never has been a more depressing thought.
10. I’ve wasted a good chunk of yesterday and most of today, and now I have at least twice as much to do as time to do it. Same old same old. And now I’ve spent even more time writing this when I’d rather be asleep. And I feel like everyone’s stress level is running high right now, and there’s just tension tension tension, or maybe that’s just me, but anyway I don’t want to contribute to it but look at me I’m doing it right now.
11. Can the weekend be here now please? And by weekend, I mean two days in a row when I don’t have things to do. Or even one day in a row. One day? Maybe one day when I only have one thing to do?
12. This really isn’t a list of bad things about today any more. Now I’m just rambling. To think, I was happy(ish) this morning. (I didn’t remember the dream until right before I started typing this.) But somewhere along the way I got to feeling angry. Angry and sad. And if you know me, you know that I’m not an angry person. I hate anger; I think it’s pointless and only makes things worse. Like today. Ok, hush now. Go to sleep. You don’t have to type everything you think. Filter. Edit. Or they won’t come back. Ramble ramble ramble. Oh, I just remembered how I’d planned to end this post, but I’ve wandered so far off-topic that it doesn’t make sense any more. So I’ll stop here. Good night.

Didn’t weekends used to be for taking time off, sleeping in…? I think I remember something like that, a very long time ago.

This weekend I have six lessons. I’m also proctoring my class’s exam tomorrow morning. When you add it all up, including drive-time, it comes out to something like 18 hours.

At least I have four hours during the exam to work on homework and whatnot. I think next week is actually some sort of no-homework week at HBU, though…whatever ‘SEW’ stands for. The workload there is light anyway. I’m taking a history class and an english class, and between them I have to write all of FIVE PAGES over the entire quarter: one three-page paper and one two-page book report. They even break it down for you: “Your essay must be about this. Make sure you consider this, this, and this, and answer these four questions. Paragraph 1: blah-di blah….” It’s like middle school, but without all those rowdy, hormonal middle-schoolers. I think there are a couple of tests in each class, and an oral report or two and a few quizzes, but none of those look like they’ll be too difficult.

Anyway, I have to be up at 7:00 tomorrow, so I’m off to bed. Today was a much better day, as far as work and focus go. I saw my shrink yesterday and we doubled my dose of Wellbutrin, so that should give me a boost for a while. Hopefully it’ll stick.