My Last Day; or The One Without Closure

I may be one of the few, but I'm always interested in the names of each TV show's episode. Typically, the name provides a bit of an inside joke, insight, or pattern. For example, all episodes of Scrubs are "My Something-or-other-that-relates-to-the episode," while all episodes of Friends are "The One-With-Something."

So, I've incorporated both of those into my title for today's post. It is my last day of teaching here, and while I've taught roughly 150 kids this year, today I saw about 30. If you're done with your finals, which most kids finished yesterday, you don't have to be here today. We have no field day, no BBQ, no big closing assembly where we celebrate 2008-2009 and look forward to the start of 2009-2010. This bums me out. I feel like there should be a wrap-up, some sense of closure. Without that, the end of the year, especially the end of my last year, feels like the final exhalation of the whoopee cushion.

I'm having a hard time reflecting, as I look around my stripped bare, empty, trash-filled classroom. Well, it's not literally trash filled, I just have two very full trash cans. I'm ready to leave, but I still have a half-hour. I feel nostalgic, joyous, exhausted, and ready for something new. When Sista Cool was helping me inventory books last week, she asked if I was going to read Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey next year for fun. I laughed, responding that I needed a bit of a break. But now I think I just might read them for fun. You never know.

As a side note--if you did not catch Fox's special premiere of Glee, and you have any love in your heart for show choir, musicals, high school, Amy Winehouse, Journey, Jane Lynch, or Indian principals, please check it out. And watch in the fall.