I am a little crazy

Today was a big-ass day. I went to the high school (a private, religious one, mind you!) for my debut as a substitute. It went alright, overall, but holy shit, some of those kids were a disaster.

First of all, I was wide awake at 4am (not up doing stuff, just in bed pretending to be asleep as I so wanted to be)(this happens to me all the freaking time if the coming morning is a big one), trying not to freak out. Trying to reassure myself that the students wouldn't laugh and walk all over me.

I taught three classes of freshmen and two of sophomores. Now, the teacher had left lesson plans and everything, but they were really boring. Sitting and reading or writing. Clearly, that sucks. The freshman were definitely on the rambunctious side, but for the most part they behaved and quieted once I called them on it. The sophomores just blatantly disregarded what I said. One class "defended" themselves by saying, well, we're never quiet, the teacher probably left you a note. I responded, I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm still going to ask you to read quietly. They finally did, a little bit, before slowly building up the noise level. The other class was completely out of fucking control. NONE of the students brought their books to class, claiming they only did if the teacher notified them ahead of time (almost all of the other class had their books with them, so this defense was bullshit). I dismissed random pairs of them to retrieve them. They proceeded to return to the classroom (I guess I have to give them that, they did come back), throw the book on their desk, and join right back in the conversation with their friends. I was at a loss. For the first half of the period, there were only a couple books in the class. I had nothing. They ate me for lunch. God.

I'm going back tomorrow. In one sense, it's not as scary as today was, because I was completely clueless this morning. Tomorrow I'll know what I'm going into. I'm not sure if it's even more intimidating. Right now it sure feels like it.

The good news is that the teacher's prep period fell at the end of the day, so I got to leave early. Which was nice, because tonight was my first day back at Starbucks. Dude, it was weird...everything came back straightaway. It was very surreal, like I was the Julie of three years ago. It went well, people appreciated that I was new but knew exactly what was going on. The four hours went fairly quickly, though my legs and especially one knee are achy. I've got three more shifts this week, Saturday off for Seattle Works Day, and then three more shifts. Hurrah for money!