402 OF 424

This last few weeks has been a real grind. Teaching, of course: finals, and the inevitable senior 'will they graduate?' crisis. And, seemingly every other day, more paperwork, more unexpected (and often unpleasant) details to resolve before the school year where 'modernization' of our rooms is concerned. Most drainingly, I've had a course that I simply had to complete for my Clear Credential.

Well, I didn't just complete the course. I did my best to bury it. Granted that is was an education course rather than, say, developmental biology, but there was a test every day, a graduate-level paper to write and hours of classroom observations to document in just a three-week time frame. In fact, I was behind from square one because they wanted 20 documented hours of special ed classes in action, and there was no way I was going to be able to give up 6-8 hours a week. So right off the back I knew I would not be able to earn those points. I still finished with 402 points, quite a bit more than I needed, as it turned out. I wish I could say that I knew that I would do that all along, but since there was quite a bit of subjectivity in the grading, I couldn't even be sure of my 'A' after the last day of instruction.....so it's actually a bit of a rush to see that I ended up where I did.

It's kind of funny, really. When I went through college the first time grades weren't that important to me. Now that I've had to do things the hard way, now that I've seen so many 'students' who think the world owes them a living.....let's just say that, now, the grade is really, really, really important to me.