Shef: Mom, Michelangelo did not use a ladder.

Me: Really? What did he use?

Shef: He used scaffolding.

Me: Oh, great.

Shef: So, if you forgot the yellow or green, you had to go all the way back down and up again.

Me: Hmmm. So he could paint the ceiling?

Shef: (nodding) Yes. And also DaVinci.

Me: What about DaVinci?

Shef: He did the Mona Lisa.

Me: That’s right!

Shef: If you go see it at the Children’s Museum, the eyes might move.

I can’t really believe this, but I’m finished with graduate school.

I know.

My life is one big open field of possibilities.

Yep! Lots of possibilities.

And so far I only have one plan.

I'm watching the end of the Gilmore Girls. This is it. The end. No more Gilmores.

This show has been an insitution in my life. I have seen every single episode from all seven seasons. My students tell me I look like Alexis Bledel. I have a crush on Lauren Graham. I wept when Rory graduated from high school, and again when she graduated from Yale. I have visited GG fansites, for god's sake, where all the fourteen-year-old female enthusiasts post their gushing praise for all things Gilmore.



It's official. I'm in mourning. I have been forced to read the E! Online TV blogs to see if there might be anything on the horizon that might fill the special place in my heart that the Gilmore Girls have occupied. I highly doubt it.

This morning I was breezing into my room after chatting in the hallway with Rachel, when I ran into Jude, one of my lovelies who plays in a rock band and pulls a C in English class by the rim of his skateboard.

“Oh, hey,” he says casually, “I just left you a note. Could you charge my iPod for me first hour, and then I’ll come back and get it second hour?”

“Uh, NO,” I say, incredulous.

Jude scraped his gelled bangs off his forehead and seemed genuinely surprised at my refusal. “Why not?”

“BeCAUSE,” I began, “I am not responsible for your electronics! BeCAUSE, I am not an iPod charging service!”

“C’mon, Ms. W.,” he pleaded.

“NO! If you would like to dock your iPod during sixth hour WHEN YOU ACTUALLY HAVE CLASS HERE, I may consider it,” I finish with a big eyeroll.

“Oh-kay,” Jude says, walking toward the desk to reclaim his silver nano.


And now we're at fifteen. Days, that is.

Dan’s poor parents asked me how work was today, so I was forced to give them a recap of the lesson.

To warm up, I sighed deeply and rolled my eyes.

“If I told you that the two of you were to create annotated bibliographies,” I said, “and as a pair, you could share three sources; but then each of you had to have three of your own, how many sources would you include in your bibliography?”

Jane looked at me skeptically. “Six,” she said, clearly wondering about the catch.

“Right,” I nodded, pausing for dramatic effect. “And I spent twenty minutes explaining that to my first hour.”


And we’re down to seventeen days, people. Seventeen days.

There’s something about May that really inspires a countdown.

“How many teaching days do I have left?”

For sure, I count every Sunday, and most often, at least one other time during the week. There’s just too much exhaustion and craziness going on NOT to count. The count, especially when it gets below 20, is reassuring. It’s like when I’m running a race and feeling like I’m going to drop dead at any second, I’ll figure out how many minutes I have left. Then I’ll tell myself, “You can do anything for ten minutes.” Or seven minutes, or four, or whatever.

My love for the count is, incidentally, the reason I couldn’t make it through labor. No one could tell me just how much longer I had to hold on. And also, the child was freakishly large and not descending.

The number of days is now at the threshold: 20. That’s not including final exam days and days I know I’ll have subs due to various professional development responsibilities. Because any day I don't have to speak to 130 sophs is a day off in my book.

Some of my students are reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri for their choice text. I love this book, and I recommend it to all. Anyway, because the kid in the book has a problem with his name, the group was talking about the names they would choose for their own future children.

“Hey, Ms. W.,” said one, “does, like, having students influence your choice of names? Like, if you had a kid in class, does that make you not want to pick that name?”

“Well,” I said, deciding to be honest, “I guess if it’s been a particularly difficult student, I might not pick the name.”

“Are there any names you definitely wouldn’t choose?” someone asked.

“Any names that rhyme with swear words are out,” I said definitively, thinking of Dan’s enthusiasm for the name Tucker. As a former middle school teacher, there’s no freaking way I could abide that.

Landon, a cheerful soph with an optimistic outlook, said, “So, if ‘Landon’ were on your list of choices, would having me in your life make you more likely to choose the name or less likely?”

“Definitely more likely,” I said, nodding, which was really the only right answer.