I wish I had made more friends, more connections or gotten along better with the other student teachers. I can't help but feel frustrated with myself for it. I didn't want to walk away with life long friends but I also didn't plan on being alienated by my peers. I know I am a tad bit to handle, obviously. I didn't think though, that I was so offensive so as to justify my peers flagrantly avoiding me. Nothing I can do about it now. Part of me is torn: One half is confident in the conviction that I will be amazing. The other half knows I will flounder, if not fail. My grammar is atrociious, and my spelling follows suit. I don't know half of what my peers know. They are all so much smarter than me. I suspect that that is why they avoided me so whole-heartedly. The only time in my life I have ever felt in control, focused and confident was in front of a class. At the same time, as a student myself I feel as if I have learned nothing.

People, just everyday people, ask me basic questions about literature and I find myself flailing. Staring at them as if they asked me to use the quadradic equasion in real life. In a classroom though, it feels right. I can't shake the feeling that I am going to tell them something wrong and they will take it as truth (some of them) because I'm the teacher and I say so. I am having such an impossible time of getting past the "what if" feeling. What if I don't know the answer? What if I tell them something wrong? What if they don't listen to me, respect me, or care what I have to say? What if I am boring? What if no one wants to be in my class and I turn into the very teacher I always hated?

I want, so badly, to be stellar. Yet I wonder whether or not I even have it in me to be amazing. I am moving to Atlanta so that I can strike out, and be on my own. Every way in life I have procrastinated and taken the easy route. I just hope that this move is good for me, and not debilitating. I hope that I don't move here and become a hermit because I have no friends, life, or anything other than grading and teaching. I wonder if I am the only person that wants to be amazing in the classroom, so despratly. Then when I think about that, it is followed up by, "why WOULDN'T someone want to be amazing in the classroom?" Then I can't help but think, "What if I don't have what it takes to be amazing, and I am setting myself up for disappointment?" This whole "what if" shit is plauging me.

I can't just be another teacher. I can't be someone boring but at the same time,I need control. And they need to learn. I have got to figure out how to make it fasinating, relevant and interesting enough that they will learn from it. I don't know whether or not my students learned while I was doing student teaching but I know at least my Accelerated classes were having fun and I think they learned something. Regular-not as much. I think what I have a huge problem with, is understanding "regular" students. Well, statistically, what is average. My average is someone similar to me and what I went through in school. Considering that it was private and a college prep school, that isn't the usual average. BUT, I do know that if you prepare your students to work above their own levels from the beginning you can do great things with any group/type of students. That is the nerve wrecking part.

I also need to get past this whole, "learning must be fun" thing. It won't always be fun, and it not being fun bothers me because it is at that time that I feel students lose out. I need to understand that basic grammar and some other things simply suck and I can't avoid them or take the easy way out because I don't enjoy them. Thats one of those things that simply needs to be covered.

Whoa. I typed a lot. The end. (I don't feel like editing, and making a conclusion.)