Today was the first day in the new building where I didn’t spend the entire day running my ass off. I spent the first teacher day and the first two days of school putting out fires and solving problems as quickly as I could– and, when necessary, that’s pretty fast— and today was the first day that felt calm. Honestly, there were points where I was almost fishing about for something to do.
Or, at least, I would have been, were it not for the fact that I get a hundred goddamn emails a day now. There are about sixty staff members and associated personages in my building and thirty-some-odd people who have my job, and a few of us need to sit down and have a talk about what emails 1) do not need to be sent to everyone on a mailing list and 2) do not need to be sent at all.
For example: the next person to send me an email that just says “thanks” is getting smacked. Because I just archived that email thread, goddammit, because I dealt with whatever you needed and I’m done with those emails now. Probably 10% of my email is just “Thanks!” or something similar, and sometimes that “Thanks!” is sent to fifty people, and … goddammit, stop. Say “Thanks in advance!” at the end of the first message.
(Note that compared to literally every other gripe I’ve had about a job ever, I recognize that this is minor. But still. Stop it, people.)
The last two books I’ve read have both been one-day reads, both because they were good and because they were really short. You could do a lot worse than checking out The Armored Saint by Myke Cole and The Descent of Monsters by J.Y. Yang. They’re both novellas, and while Yang wrote their book specifically as a novella the one weakness of Cole’s book is that it feels more like the first third of a long book rather than an entire book by itself. It’s a minor gripe, though. Check ’em out.
Speaking of books, N.K. Jemisin won another Best Novel Hugo last night– I need to reread the Broken Earth trilogy soon– and you should read her acceptance speech, which is awesome.
Let’s start by ripping the band-aid off: after spending the entire day convinced I was going to throw up at any moment, I went in to school yesterday afternoon after the kids left, resigned, and cleaned out my classroom.
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