A few weeks ago at school I found a copy of The Great Gatsby and it had some penises drawn inside the front cover, and this made me smile. You don’t see a lot of dick drawings in schools these days. The potential dick-draw-ers are now just watching Tik Tok videos or playing games on their phone. The decline of dicks drawn on desks and bathroom walls and in books correlates directly to the prevalence of smart phone usage.

There is a small yet vicious and vociferous group of parents in my school district that believes teachers are trying to make their kids gay social justice warriors who should feel bad about the fact that they’re white, but what we, the teachers, really want, is for kids to put. their. fucking. phones. away. I wish the vocal minority that spews such hatred toward our district leadership would direct their efforts towards advocating for no smartphones in schools, making classrooms phone-free spaces.

But that’s never going to happen. Phones (or should I say: small, portable computers that everyone stares at all day long) are a part of our world now. As a teacher, I can choose to teach or moderate phone-usage, but I can’t do both simultaneously (at least not well). Remember that scene in Office Space when they take the printer out to an open field and take turns smashing it to pieces with bats? I often fantasize about doing this with my students’ phones.

Earlier in the semester I had a student come up to me after I gave a lesson on MLA format and citations, and she asked me, “How do I do MLA format and citations?” and I said, “I just spent twenty minutes explaining that, and you were on your phone the entire time. Go ask your neighbor.” I could have used the old proximity trick during my lesson and stood next to her as a way of communicating, “I see you on your phone and you need to get off of it,” but she was in the very back corner of the classroom, and I needed to be at my computer to deliver the lesson. I could have called her out: “[Name], I see that you’re on your phone and you need to put it away and pay attention because you get points for having correct MLA form.” OR, I could have verbalized what I’m often thinking: “GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE BEFORE I TAKE IT AND BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH IT,” but I didn’t do any of those, opting for the “she’ll have to learn the hard way” approach.

School is really tough this year. My juniors seem extra apathetic. Everything is so heated because of the current political climate. Books, curriculum, masks. I hate politics, and now I work in the innermost ring of political hell: the public school system. Every December, when the chaos of the semester is in full swing, I think: I need a new job. This year the chaos has been debilitating at times. But I don’t really care about anything besides education and the written word (when it comes to professional matters), so here I am at year 18 as a high school English teacher. Recently I’ve been joking a lot with friends and colleagues about marrying somebody/anybody just to get his (or her) health insurance so that I can quit teaching and just do some hustling here and there to make ends meet. Teaching is just so stressful right now, and I keep thinking that, if I have a limited amount of time left on this earth, I just want to do something low-key. I would still work, but it just wouldn’t include grading the essays and managing the behavior of 100 teenagers. However, that’s just not plausible. I have to work, and considering the only things I’m passionate about are education (good pensions to be earned) and writing (no money to be made), I need to stay put. I called the Missouri Public School Retirement System the other week to see what it would cost to buy some years so that I could potentially retire early, and since it would cost $282K, I’m going to work until I croak. I’m eligible for retirement in July of 2035 when I’m 55, but I don’t know if I’ll live that long. Whenever I have these thoughts about my own mortality, it leads me to thoughts about mortality in general and the brevity of life. Nobody is guaranteed 77.8 years (the current average life span for an American).

Since I started the trial back in the beginning of August, I’ve had two sets of scans (which include a CT and a bone scan). The first set of scans, which came about 8 weeks after starting the trial medications, showed a fairly significant decrease in the size of my lung and lymph node tumors (I can’t even feel the tumor on my clavicle), and no new growth in my bones. The second set of scans, which came about 8 weeks after the first, showed no reduction in tumor size, but there was no new tumor growth, and the bones showed sclerosis (hardening), which suggests a response to treatment. I don’t know how long I’ll be a part of this trial. I assume that eventually the trial drug will get FDA approval, and as long as my combo of selective-estrogen-receptor-degrader (SERD) and CDK 4 & 6-inhibiter keep the wolves at bay, then I’ll just continue this regimen (and eventually the SERD will become FDA approved and be sent to me via Express Scripts like all of my other meds). From what I’ve read about metastatic breast cancer, you take a cocktail of meds that works for you until it doesn’t work for you and then you find a new cocktail and you take it until it too becomes ineffective and you repeat this process until the wolves become too numerous and aggressive and they devour you.

I also get two shots every month: Xgeva to keep my bones strong and Zoladex to keep my ovaries inactive.

My hair is coming back in the same manner that it did the last time I finished chemo. Right now it’s currently in the larval stages of the afro. It’s beginning to curl a bit.

One of my favorite stories is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which I just finished rereading last night. I love the idea of being able to start over again. To start fresh. To recognize your wrongs and still be able to move forward in a positive direction. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching: it’s full of new beginnings. Every year I keep a document for each course I teach entitled “Reflections on [insert current school year] and To-Do for [insert next school year].” I’m always thinking about how to do something better (a better way to present a lesson, a different type of assessment). At times I get so bogged down by certain difficult aspects of the job, but I need to break out of my Scrooge cycle and focus on the positive. My school has been so incredibly supportive of me these past few months, from various fundraisers and recognitions to kind words from students and staff. I teach a course for highly motivated freshmen that requires them to do fairly extensive independent research, and they periodically turn in annotated bibliographies (affectionately known as A Bibs) to display their findings. The students I had last year worked together this fall to create an “A Bib” of why they love me and my course, and it’s one of my favorite things ever.

Sometimes The Negative overpowers me and I lose sight of the big picture. There is too much good to be weighed down by the bad. I’m choosing to channel my inner Tiny Tim this last full week before winter break and remind myself that (besides the frequent diahrrea) I feel fine, and I’m living my life to the fullest and making a living through a profession that develops the minds and character of the next generation of leaders (as opposed to just grinding it out for The Man) and grants me two months off in the summer. It could be worse.

God bless us, everyone.