Oh. My. God.

It's all over. I am no longer a first-year teacher. The year is over. I have survived 180 days of twelve-year-olds. Holy shit. It's summer!

Clearly, I can't yet truly believe it. My life has only been teaching for the last twelve months (yep, remember I moved out here last June to start the Fellows?), and all of a sudden it's over.

I am thrilled and excited and also, slightly exhausted.

The last day was mostly a whirlwind, and a sweaty one at that. The heat isn't oppressive anymore, but the humidity sure as hell is.

For most of first period, Class B helped distribute a month's worth of homework to each other. Then we all had an assembly and talent show. The auditorium is not air-conditioned and not well-ventilated, so it seemed to be interminable. Out of all the honor certificates given out, a mere handful of my students were represented. Interesting, no? The talent show was all girls and five of the acts were the same four girls. As a grand finale, a few of us teachers got up there and shook our groove things to Beyonce's Crazy in Love. Yes, I was up there too. I felt dumb a little, but I figured what the hey, let the kids see us all make a fool of ourselves just this once. :)

The kids left at 10.30, then one of my teacher/Fellow friends and I rented a car. We walked to the nearby Enterprise and were severely underwhelmed and unimpressed at the experience. Enterpunishment, more like.

Because they didn't have their shit together, the compact or economy that I had reserved online (because it said they had them available) was not there. They wanted us to wait while they got one from the airport. Yeah, right. We were like, no, we need it right now. So they gave us the only one they had, which was a silver Sebring convertible.

We rushed back to school to distribute the report cards. That was boring. I sat there with Class B's report cards for more than an hour, and only seven students/parents came. Dullsville for sure.

I stole one of my students who was milling around aimlessly, and in half an hour we had my room cleared and my things brought downstairs. So much stuff!

Then the real fun began. We had a list to get checked off by various supervisors and secretaries, and checks to pick up, and another form to fill out for next week....it took forever and I was sweating like a pig. Another student helped me bring the things out to the car, and we got my friend's stuff, and left school at 3. By four we had dropped off my things and her things.

We were so excited about all the options open to us with a car to drive. The first thing we did was a drive-thru Wendy's. And we traveled between school and home in fifteen minutes instead of one hour. We finally put the top down in the evening, when it had cooled a bit. It was fantastic. We had to keep reminding ourselves that we were done with school, too. Very exciting altogether.

In the evening I went out with four of my colleagues. One drove us into the city and the Village, where we ate dinner, talking and laughing about school stuff. I had two giant strawberry margaritas and some fries (I'd had pizza earlier), but they seemed pretty tame. But then we went to the club next door and after about ten minutes, those margaritas, and the stress of the last two days, hit me like a ton of bricks. I could not keep my eyes open. The house band was playing great music, and it was a fun atmosphere, but I kept dozing off. My eyes drooped, I nodded off, for a minute or five, opened my eyes, looked around, and then the cycle began again. It was pretty pathetic, but I just couldn't help it.

They dropped me off at about 1am, when I crashed and dreamed an anxious dream about the first day of school next year. My first night of freedom and I'm already stressing out about September!

This morning we took our rental car to make a Costco trip, and I got all kinds of things, like pistachios and walnuts, cookie dough, photo ink and paper, and BrainQuest cards. Sweet!

It doesn't feel like my first day of summer vacation, it just feels like a Saturday or something. Like I said, it really hasn't hit that I'm "free." I am very happy and very relieved, though. Duh.