For The Weak of Heart (or perhaps the Strong?)

by Renata Vallazza on Monday, October 25, 2010 at 4:25pm

I sit here in my reverie of solitude, enjoying the silence very much as I am always surrounded by loud and noisy students or people on any given day and I have been reflecting a lot of what's been going on the past few months.

I began this school year full of optimism and hope, as I do every year.  Right about the end of the first quarter, (right about the current time of the year,)  my optimism seems to drop into an abyss of dark thoughts.  "What are these dark thoughts?" you probably wonder.  Perhaps they are not just as "dark" but as they are rife with thoughts about my job and if I can really handle the rest of the year.  It is usually about this time every year that I feel as depressed as a turkey panini.

Take today, for example.  Today is a day where there are no students, only teachers and principals that wander around the halls and putter around the classrooms. They are called Planning Days. I love days like today where there are no students.  That doesn't mean that I don't like being a teacher, it's just that I like the silence of the halls and no fights, no noise, no stress to get me down in the dumps.  I like days like today.  That was of course true until I began to think about all the crap that we've had to deal with lately and it put right back in The Dumps again.

For those of you that don't know, I am a teacher. I've been teaching Spanish since 2007.  My first year was FANTASTIC!!! I absolutely LOVED teaching and being a teacher. It was fun because I got to teach my students not only things from the book, but other things about Spanish language and culture as well. I could be one on one with my students and tell them about the adventures I had been on as an undergrad and the opportunities that awaited them after high school.

Alas, my joy has been short-lived.  For the past two years and beginning of this year included, I feel like I am in a swimming pool or a large body of water where I am struggling to stay afloat.  This year, I have been or at least feel that I have been put under a lot of stress lately (or perhaps I'm just putting myself through all of it for nothing).  I had a tough year last year and I almost quit in the middle of the year, but I didn't want to put my seniors last year of having to adjust to and hate a new teacher.  However, last year I WAS under a lot of stress to perform differently and it put me under a lot of stress and I had so much anxiety that I would wake up in the middle of the night just to look at the clock and see how much time I had left to sleep or before I had to wake up and begin the hum-drummery again.

It has come to haunt me again.

Everything this year was fine until Sept. 16.  School began on August 23 this year.  I was told that I was going to teach one 4x4 class (meaning a class everyday for 90 minutes, cramming 2 years worth of Spanish into 1), three Spanish 1 classes and one Spanish 2 class.  My classes were a little large, but not too bad. I didn't want my classes to be messed with since they had kept talking about "leveling" them to cap it at 25 students or less.  I didn't want to have to go through that again as I did last year and they took a lot of good students out.

Of course, Murphy's Law hits dear old Ren again.  They got rid of AN ENTIRE CLASS and gave me a brand new class.  And of course they had to take my wonderful 7th period class and break them up into pieces and give me other kids.  Most of those kids are great, but some of them cause me to have serious heart palpitations.

I've been noticing a lot more the palpitations and the flutterings and the STRESS build up into my shoulders.  One day I went into work thinking about what I was going to do with my kids that day and BAM! Panic just started building up inside and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even FUNCTION!!!

So I made an appointment that same day.

I went to the doctor.  She ran an EKG on me.  She drew two vials of blood. And she gave me Xanax, which by the way, is amazing, but I don't take it every day.  That stuff could be deadly, so I take it only when I need it (which would be about now).  And she sent a referral to the cardiologist.

So I went to the cardiologist.

They asked me a bunch of questions, mostly family health history.  I did happen to mention that all four of my grandparents died of some heart related cause, such as a heart attack or a stroke.  I mentioned diabetes and emphysema. I mentioned leukemia.  I mentioned a lot of stuff.

The doctor then took my blood pressure. Like three times.

He asked me, "Are you nervous?"

No. I am not nervous. It's a day off for me. I'm not at school.  Why?

"Well, Renata, we've taken your blood pressure THREE times and each time it just keeps getting a little higher."

Hmmm.....I didn't feel nervous. My heart was pounding, but I wasn't nervous.  His final consensus was that a woman my age should not have such high blood pressure as I do. Apparently, 143 over 87 is high.  I looked at him as if he were speaking Greek to me.  I have no need nor apparently have had any education on the wonders of high blood pressure.

I know my mother has high blood pressure and takes meds for it. My father's mother had high blood pressure and because of the nature of her death, we stopped using salt in our food because of blood pressure.

What he said was that I need to go back for a stress test and a heart monitor this week and go back for my results next week.

Which brings me back to my original point of this note.  Beware for long, run-on sentence:

Today, while putting my desks into the "treasured groups" that we teachers have to put them into because some idiot got the idea that putting students in groups for the ENTIRE CLASS period works (whatever dummy thought of that should get a Brown Medal of Stupidity) and fyi - groups only works for group projects or for small discussions, not entire class periods, I get the news that I have an old student being returned to me which irks me.  This student I remember telling me that he was going to refuse to do his work so that he could be put back into Spanish 1.

Somehow, sub-consciously, my heart went off into a series of palpitations for about 3 hours. I'm still trying to catch my breath.

This is not going to be a good year.  I just know it.  :(   Most people would say, "Don't say that!  That's not true!"  but I can sense things that most people can't.  I'm just THAT intuitive.

I just hope for the sake of my son that I can manage to keep it together as long as possible.