Conclusions are important.
The end of the semester is one of my least favorite times of the year, both as a student and as a paren- I mean, teacher. I began typing "parent" unintentionally. Foreshadowing? What? No. What? Finals start, and everyone is locked in on doing what they have to do to survive, then finals end and the semester is just over. There's no time for reflection, no appreciation, nothing. At Hillsdale, my friends finished finals on all sorts of days/times, and it was likely a majority of the friend group left town before anyone really acknowledged they were leaving. You have a plane to catch, or a long drive ahead, and you don't have time to hunt everyone down and say goodbye, and the people you hunted down might resent you interrupting valuable study time, so you just hug the people you see on the way out and justify the rest by saying you'll see them next semester. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable.
My worst semester ending was my first at Hillsdale. I had pulled multiple all-nighters during the week (Thurs - Wed), and my last final was 8 a.m. Wednesday. Calculus. I finished at 10 a.m., and all my friends were gone. I hadn't even been aware of the passage of time or what day it was; everything blurred together. Funny story: I may have dozed off during the math final and scrawled some nonsentence about Dante's Inferno as an answer (my previous final had been English). Thankfully I woke up and realized the potential disaster, pulled myself together, and finished the test with mostly number responses. I can only call it a funny story because I still pulled out an "A" in Calc that semester (Calc 2 is a much different, much longer, story). Also, it's important to note that I learned from that experience. I got better at finals, and sleeping, later.
My master plan called for me to move dorms (from Simpson to the Suites, long story) by myself, then drive the 8 hours home (by myself). I had no one to help me move, so this involved several car trips in freezing weather on no sleep. There's this one brutal scene where my biggest piece of furniture (a papasan) won't fit in my car so I'm balancing it on the roof as I drive through the snow. A combination of all the most horrible things in life: moving, sleep deprivation, cold, solitude... Between every trip I would collapse on the sheetless bed and give myself a pep talk to keep going. More than anything, I just wanted to make it home and sleep in my own bed. The worst part was, they were closing down the dorms so I couldn't have stayed if I wanted to.
Once I'd moved everything, I started driving, made it an hour or so, then pulled over and slept in a parking lot. Remember, I was going on no sleep, a math final, and moving by myself. The only reason I woke up was because my body was slowly freezing (try napping in a car for an hour when it's 10 degrees out), but my extremities somehow resisted hypothermia and I made it the rest of the way home.
The same thing happens now as a young teacher... everyone just wants to get home, and very few of my friends are actually from Phoenix, so that means the last few days are full of trips to the airport and hasty goodbyes. Different schools end at different days/times, too, which doesn't help. My only warning that Travis was leaving for good was that he yelled "Merry Christmas!" as he slammed the door on his way out. I was left on the couch thinking... "hmm, that's unusual behavior, I wonder when I'll see him again..." Sub-optimal for sure.
It's obvious that the finals system is to blame here, rather than a lack of planning ahead on our part. Tongue-in-cheek? Either way, the solution is far less obvious. In fact, as a teacher I've been just as frustrated.
I have two scenarios. First, Economics. Their final is group presentations, and it takes the entire period. No opportunity to address them one last time, and I won't teach them again in the spring.
Then, Medieval History. I give them a final and they usually have some time left at the end of the period, then I will see them again next semester.
Economics was tough because their presentations ran long this time, meaning the whole class had to stay over the assigned hour forty-five slot. So, our last experience together was a majority of the class getting stressed/annoyed, with a few unlucky students up front attempting to finish their presentation after the bell rang. There's no way I could keep them longer and attempt to give a few final thoughts or even to thank them for a good semester, it wouldn't be fair. It really bothers me that, after a semester of teaching those two sections, now I'll never have a chance to address that group all at once again. Even though we had a great semester, I don't like the last experience, and that takes away from the overall experience.
Medieval is both more and less tough. There is a lot of variation between when they finish the test, so the first student may be done a solid 30-40 minutes before the last. In that time, my main requirement is to keep the classroom quiet. Some kids are fine; they bring study materials or books, but most of them are as restless as you would imagine being after finishing a final exam. So, they end up being loud, and what usually ends up happening is me rebuking/threatening the students for the last part of class. I can't even realistically threaten them with detention, or send them out in the hall, or any of my go-to disciplinary tactics, because its the end of the semester. It's a lose-lose situation. Even if I were to settle them down successfully and talk to them the last 10 minutes before the bell rang, they wouldn't be listening. At all. Which, would make me even more frustrated. I know because it's been a failed strategy in the past.
During that last week or so of school, the momentum is building so quickly that it becomes impossible to stop, or even slow down. Ideally, I would be able to find a time to have a brief heart-to-hearts with the section, to review the semester and summarize a few takeaways, or things to think about for next year. I failed this year, and it's on short list of things I haven't gotten better at over the first few years of teaching. The closest thing I've come to a solution is note-writing... this year I managed to write a note to every student who brought me a gift, plus a few extra/special students. The way I see it, if I know there won't be an opportunity for us to pause in the chaos together, I can pause it in writing on my own, and they can pause to read it later. An imperfect solution, and not one I'm satisfied with.
The importance of endings is related to the "What have you done for me lately?" mentality, which says that a multitude of positives can be blotted out by one negative, if the negative comes at the end. It's both entirely unfair, and entirely understandable. I know its the way my memory works, and it takes a Herculean effort for me to see things in a more rational, balanced perspective. One thing I'm good at is viewing other people in the long run. Rather than judge them on their last interaction, I can average it out to have a more accurate opinion of them. I'm much more hard on myself, though. In each of the first two quarters, the worst week for me was the last week, and that has been driving me crazy. It makes me feel like a failure. I can't get around it.
Now for the sports analogy that you've all been waiting for! It's not at all necessary, but it's a good story, and it's Christmas.
My freshman year, there was a quite open four-way race to be the 5th starter on the varsity basketball team. Me, my two best friends (both named David), and my best friend's older brother, Bryan, who was a senior. The coach used it as motivation the whole pre-season, and didn't tell us who'd he picked for the spot until the practice before the first game. He picked me.
We were basically a two-man team, so the last three starters were very much role players, but still. Starting varsity was a big deal, especially when you're beating out your friends.
I had played basketball for the first time in 7th grade, and I was the last player on the bench by a wide margin. For whatever reason, I fell in love with it, and basketball became the single biggest focus of my high school life. I wanted to be good at everything, but basketball more than anything. Getting named a varsity starter as a freshman felt like all the work I'd put in over the previous two years was paying off.
I was unbelievably nervous/excited for the game. It was an absolute disaster. I had three traveling violations (4 total TO) in the first half, and I started the third quarter with another traveling call. Kobe can get away with those stats, but not a freshman role player on a HS team coached by a lawyer. I guess that's what happens when you spend your summer practicing without referees around and have an infamously quick first step.
So, there's me, sitting on the bench for the rest of the third quarter. Was I crying, you ask? Yes. I had just squandered my chance, everything I'd worked for was wasted. The immensity of the failure was impossible to ignore. I didn't start another varsity game that season.
That's a sad story, right? But, I skipped the ending. I didn't tell you what happened in the fourth quarter.
By the fourth quarter, our team had opened up a lead, and the coach decided to give me a few more minutes. I came into the game knowing I couldn't play worse than I had.
I got a pass on a breakaway and made a layup. Then a jumpshot from the left side. Then an and-1 (FT good) on another fast break. Then a 3-pointer (one of those that looked bad the whole way before kinda swishing through the side). Then, I was fouled on a jumpshot and made 1-of-2 free throws.
11 points in the 4th. More than any other role player scored in a game the whole season (with one exception).
The story isn't sad anymore. I wasn't ready for varsity pressure, but I did have a high ceiling, potentially. The coaches changed their approach to me as a result of that first game. I was going to gain experience playing JV primarily. So, freshman year I was the go-to guy on the JV team, and it made me an immensely more confident player, and a leader. The next season I was a co-captain on the varsity team.
Fun game: you can measure how well you know me by the point in this blog where you realized it wasn't going to have a conclusion. Before I started writing? Tom Sawyer level. The title? Jon Gregg level. The first sentence? No excuse for missing that cue, folks.
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Fine. The point of not having a conclusion? If you feel somewhat robbed by the lack of a cohesive ending, that's the same feeling I get at the end of the semester. If you feel like a lot of potential was lost, yeah. And, obviously, these last few sentences are the filter through which you will view the earlier thoughts. Now, whether you want to call this paragraph explaining why there's no conclusion a conclusion is up to you.
Did you see that coming, Tom?
How bout that?
The end.
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