The Little Frustrations of Failure . . .

I made a mistake today. Not so much a mistake, as a miscalculation. One of many that my life now consists of.

Since this is the last week of school before Christmas, and since we just finished our unit on Shakespeare, I decided to take a break from our usual itinerary, and read Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol in my 12th grade English class.

That was not the mistake.

The mistake was assigning the first stave (or "chapter") for them to read at home last night. I didn't think we could complete the story at school, since we only have three class-periods left before break, so I figured we'd read half at school (with hot chocolate, goodies, and hats), and half at home.

This was probably a reasonable assumption. However, the first stave is, in many ways, the most important. It is the chapter that establishes Scrooge's character, and builds a foundation for all that comes next. Without it, there is really nothing spectacular about this story of transformation and redemption. It is just a random fantasy about ghosts and memories and Christmas.

If it were necessary to have the students read at home every night, to stay on track, I would feel justified in my decision. But we are now ahead of schedule, and I regret my failure to consider the implication of assigning THAT chapter, and the possibility that students would not read it.

The reason I post this here is simply that it serves as a great example of what my last three and a half months of teaching have been like. A million tiny miscalculations grinding against my desire for excellence and natural tendency towards perfectionism. And I am torn between giving in to the frustration and declaring that this is clearly NOT the vocation for me, or allowing my competitive side to take hold, and continuing on simply to prove that I AM capable of doing better than this.