Roughin' It.

It's been a rough week for me. 

On Monday I came home with a headache.  I think I had something like seven different appointments with students--I'm meeting with all my students one-on-one this week for a sort of midterm check-in.  This, however, seems to have opened a can of worms.  How much drama can be contained within the lives these few students?  Answer: Lots. 

During one particular meeting, a student goes off ranting about how basically the school has screwed him over and the world is against him, blah, blah, blah.  And he started crying, which I don't see a lot of from my guy students.  His tears dried and then he continued with the "woe is me" spiel.  Then he started carrying over that frustration into my meeting with him, saying that this whole thing was pointless.  At that point, I had had it.  I closed his portfolio and said in a firm voice, "You know what, buddy (name witheld), if I'm wasting your time you don't need to be here..."  As soon as I did that, the student finally realized I was serious and said "No, Sherise, no I didn't mean it that way..."  And then I launched into my whole "I care a heckuva lot for my students and if you think that I'm just doing my job out of duty, you're wrong."  Which was accompanied by me getting choked up, and then him finally taking me seriously. 

Boy, oh boy.  Does it really have to amount to the teacher crying in front of her students to get them to realize that she cares about them?

Well, it took my Savior's death to realize how precious my salvation is.  Certainly puts things in perspective.

What else of the dramatic sort? I had a student who totaled his car and his main concerns were the drugs stashed in his car and how his car was now a total wreck.  Dude, just be glad you have life.  Because tragically, for another one of my students, her boyfriend's father was killed last week in a car accident.  Another student got dumped by her fiance.  And another student (whom I haven't seen in over a month) is wanted by the cops. I think I'll just stop here.

"Life on life."  That's how I explained our job to my coworker today.  Because we deal with life on life, the result is all of this yuckiness.  When I had a student storm out on me today and then return, I took a deep breath and drew from another life--that of my Savior.  Thank God His grace is in abundant supply.  I'm so in need of it.