082318 ok so ok so ok so here’s a pop quiz for either me several years from now, or else someone else who’s not me, at pretty much any time, i guess: Looking back through all this stuff, the main thing that seeps or jumps out at me is____. The main thing that shines through is____. If you’re not either of the people mentioned above, please do not take this quiz. Your response will not be recorded. OK, I’m going to talk about this again, yo. Marijuana is only good every now and then as a treat, preferably with people. Daily use leads within 72 hours to brain fog, dopiness, sketchiness, self-disparagement, lack of confidence, utter inability to focus (makes the normal “difficulty focusing” look like a straight narrow rod of intense concentration!), and tendency to say dumb shit that doesn’t make any god damned sense. So if you can’t save it for certain occasions, and if you don’t have the sense to do your other work, the work that was working just fine until you started up smoking pot again, then you can’t buy it anymore. You can’t afford it anyway, jesus, now (as the boys on the train had said, coincidentally) that it’s trendy, it’s so stupidly expensive! And it’s not actually any better, I don’t care what they say about the percentages of this and that, throwing out pseudo-scientific quackery to try to sell you the same old boring buzz as something that’s really going to make you intelligent and the life of the party and in touch with yourself and educated, not just some dumb kid who refuses to grow up and can’t stop sucking on his widdle pipe. Know what I’m sayin? I regret leaving Early View Academy before getting to the point where I could really teach those kids anything. I was so self-centered and scared. I wonder if I did ever say or do anything that stuck with any of them in any way. I hope so. I hope Xavier, or Devonte, or the other Davonte, or Monique (?), or Scotty or LaShae (I SHIP THEM), or Marquis, or ... what was his name, that copper colored kid with the mannerisms of a young old man ... or Sha--?? what was his name, the wide babyfaced one that was full of rage but almost always stayed so calm, so serene, so sleek and velvety and on top of things, unruffled, who started singing along so very quietly to the same music some other guy laughed out loud about... because it was the Wailers, and he was like, “OMG (whatever the black 2009 equivalent of that wouldve been), he thought we would like this, because we’re black, and...!!!” And I would just be scornful of that kid that said that, and just be like, no, you don’t get it, that’s not at all why I picked this, but then I would be lying and I would know it, so what’s the point of even pretending. Bless that kid--hey, I wonder if he remembers that? Maybe it was just such an expected, disappointingly normal type of thing to have happen when some naive, condescending, oblivious do-gooder white teacher comes in and tries to do what they were told, that he would have just forgotten it by now. Maybe I’m the one that remembers that one, because I’m the one that was fucking clueless and learned something. I feel like I learned a lot from those fucking kids, and I know that’s supposed to be a good thing, that’s like one of those goody goody things teachers say when they’re trying to sound genuine and authentic and passionate and hip and whatever else--oh, i learn so much from the students--but sometimes it’s really true, and sometimes, looking back, i feel like they got the shit end of the stick on that one. I learned so much from them, and what did I teach them in return? Just that they were right all along? That the white privileged world does see them as underacheivers, culturally impoverished, exotically entertaining, and not worth caring enough about to really try your hardest to do your job the best that you possibly could? Or was I trying my hardest? Was that my hardest? How would I know, looking back, and/or how would I have known then, at the time, whether there was a harder or not? Isn’t it kind of true that we’re always trying our hardest, all the time, just kind of by definition? That’s it’s unfair to retrospectively judge yourself by the standards of whatever you’ve overcome or accomplished or learned NOW, years LATER? If that’s bullshit when you apply it to yourself, it’s bullshit when you apply it to your students, too. So which is it? Bullshit or not bullshit? And if it’s not bullshit, then you can go ahead and quit torturing yourself. You did the best you could. Twenty one seconds to go. Looks like I made it. One more time. Whew. That was a close one. Because (mostly, I think) of the pot. Keep that in mind, future me. And other person who’s not me, at any time, past, present, or future. Keep that in mind, and then go on and do whatever it was you were going to do in the first place. What else are you gonna do, after all?