Grownup?

Throughout school people always said, "Don't worry about grades. Your grades now have nothing to do with your future success." I thought, "Oh no! Getting good grades is the only thing I'm good at!"

Throughout college people always said, "Don't worry if you don't know what you want to do yet. God will lead you. You can explore different things." I thought, "Is something wrong with me that I've known what I wanted to do for ten years? Am I limiting God's plan?"

Now I read blogs or articles or statuses from my peers in their early- to mid-twenties, and I still feel like I don't fit. I got married straight out of college and started my "real career," as one of my friends put it recently, by which I took it she meant the career I intend on retiring from. I'm not in grad school; I'm not doing some cool internship in Latin American.

It seems my whole life I have fit the traditional mold in a way that everyone is trying to tell you you don't need to fit, and so I have ended up not fitting.

I love being married, I love teaching [sometimes], but occasionally I feel like I missed being young - as in, something has to be wrong with either me or them, and I know too many of "them" to think they're irresponsible. But how do I feel so much responsibility already?

Part of it is being a teacher. Four years out of high school, I am responsible for high schoolers - "I need my medication." "I'm going to throw up." "Boy Z just pushed a pencil into my hand; can you take out the sliver?" "Can you warm up my sandwich?" "He pushed me!" "Someone stole my lemonade!" + the daily knowledge that I am responsible. In a fire, I am responsible for getting them out of the building. In a lockdown, I am responsible for getting them silent and against the wall. When they are too loud, I am responsible. When they fight, I am responsible. When someone's sister died, and he just ran out of class, and girl Y in the back is yelling at girl Q for hitting her with a book, and boy P needs a pencil, and girl T is about to throw up, and girl R lost her homework again, and no one is actually doing their work (yes, at the same time), I am responsible. When a girl runs out crying because another student is presenting about cars, and her boyfriend is in a coma from a car accident, and I can't find her in any of the bathrooms, I am responsible.

I read somewhere recently about how part of being a grownup is realizing that grownups don't call themselves that. But sometimes I just think, "When did I become this grownup?" There's no middle ground - someone was responsible for me, and now I am responsible for all of you!

Being a teacher is part being an actor - pretending to be this big firm adult. I think as you age, you have to pretend less because 1) you are actually adultier and 2) you look adultier, so you don't have to act so as much. The other day I accidentally called a student "dude." I apologized, but I don't think she had noticed. And of course, the daily battles of not laughing at the insulting or inappropriate jokes. And not telling anyone to shut up.

And here I wasn't going to talk about my job in this post!

I guess sometimes I just start to feel alone in doing what I thought was like...the appropriate path? And I'm just standing here being like, where is everyone else?

In college, we were all in college, majoring in different things, sure, but still in college. And now everyone is doing such different things, and not just different things, but in different...ways?

Snow day tomorrow! So here I am, up late (10:40, mock if you must), drinking my hot cocoa (with whipped cream from my fancy creamer), pondering over the state of things.

Sweet dreams,
Anneke