Do you absolutely hate having too much time to yourself? Do you sigh at your desk with too many hours to get your work done, and wish that people were knocking at your door every ten minutes? You might want to consider becoming a teacher. As a teacher, your day will fly by with students taking up every free minute of your day until it’s time to go home. Some of them might follow you right out the door, and even out to the parking lot! Seriously, if you’re the kind of person that hates to work in silence, and loves to answer the same questions again, and again, and again, teaching might be the right job for you!
Most people just hate the drudgery of arriving at work and sitting down at their desk to start the day. Being a teacher eliminates that tired old routine of staring at your computer screen, waiting for your brain to reboot. From the minute you set foot on campus, students will swarm around you like moths to a flame, eager to ask questions about their average and what you will be doing in class that day. Their hands will be full of crumpled overdue papers just for you to grade, and creative excuses will flow from their mouths like mana from heaven!—or something.
That’s just the beginning. Wait until you try to take attendance and start class. That’s when the students will set your heart-a-flutter with dozens of emergency bathroom requests, questions about their grades, more crumpled up sheets of overdue assignments, more creative and heart-wrenching excuses, and last but not least, more inquiries about what you will be doing in class that day.
You can write the agenda for the class period step-by-step on the board if you want to, but your students want nothing more than to hear you recite the day’s activities, as many times as possible. They love the sound of your droning voice. It lulls them right to sleep.
Are you tired of watching the clock at work tick along at a snail’s pace? In the classroom, the clock’s hands will appear to spin by, as you attempt to teach an engaging lesson, while redirecting students back to their seats, and breaking up side conversations. You’ll soon become an expert at spotting students on their cell phones, and gently waking up them up by pointedly clearing your throat. Before you know it, your class will be over before you can say, “Open your books to page 37!”
Do you loathe casually strolling to the restroom whenever you feel the need to “go”? As a teacher, you’ll love the challenge of pushing your bladder to its very limits, along with the thrill of walking (briskly) to the restroom as fast as your tight work pants will allow you to move. Whoa, careful there, try not to knock over any students as you fight your way through the fray and pray that there will be a stall available for you.
Fortunately for teachers, there is no lonely alone time in the bathroom either. Teachers often get to share a restroom with students. That’s right, your students don’t just get to hear you lecture, they also get to hear you pee. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the kind of students that will want to ask about their homework right in the next stall! Don’t worry about anonymity in the stall, they can recognize your shoes, and they won’t be too shy to ask you where you got them.
No endless hour-long lunches for teachers! Bo-o-o-o-ring! You will soon become a food-scarfing champion as you learn how to eat a salad, a main dish, bread, and maybe even dessert as you write emails and answer texts in an astounding fifteen minutes! Not many people can pull off that kind of eating feat—only teachers. Now, don’t get worried that you’ll have to do all of this in solitude. Your students would never leave you to suffer your lunch period alone.
Rest assured, they will be knocking on your door to search your room for their belongings, drop off their belongings, ask what homework will be due next period, come looking for their friends, and of course—with more crumpled up overdue assignments and earth-shattering excuses.
When the final bell rings, don’t worry, you won’t have to hurry home. There will be scads of students arriving at the sound of the last bell for tutoring, especially the day before grades are due. This will be the most exciting part of your day as students will mob around your desk with stacks of papers for you to grade immediately so they can still catch the first bus home.
Jumpstart your grading engines as you give quizzes, read papers, and check multiple choice questions at record speed. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you will learn to assess multiple genres of student work in one hour before asking your students to leave so you can race over to your own kids’ school to pick them up.
At the end of the day, don’t feel afraid to walk to your car at night. Your students will light your path with their company as they follow you out to your car with their final goodbyes, questions about what you will do in class tomorrow, promises to attend tutoring next time, and more crumpled up papers for you to stuff in your work bag, with the song of their excuses ringing in your ears.
After you have brought your children home, bathed and fed them, and tucked them into bed with a good-night story, don’t feel like you have to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, while feeling crushed under the pressure of your own thoughts. You still have a pillowy-soft pile of papers to grade.
Let your students’ literary voices soak into your subconscious as you grade essay after essay. If you’re really fortunate, you’ll even dream about being in your classroom tonight. All teachers will tell you, that almost as if by magic, they share a recurring dream in which they find themselves teaching a class of one-hundred students that they are unable to control. Just think, you could join the multitude of teachers who spend their entire day at school, bring schoolwork home, and even dream about school at night.
So stop counting every minute of every day and be a teacher! No seriously, come teach our students, because we could use a break and maybe a little time to ourselves.
Vivian Maguire is an English Teacher and a parent in El Paso, TX. Follow her on Twitter @Maguireteacher. Like her Facebook page.
