I’ve
alluded to it in previous posts, talking about the malaise that accompanies the
end of the semester; however, now I’ve come up with a clever name that seems to
most accurately capture the idea.
I’m not
trying to belittle those who suffer from PTSD with this name; if anything, I’m
trying to draw a very real comparison to how the end of the semester affects me
and other teachers.
At the end
of the semester, from the moment the final grades are entered, I (and other
teachers I have spoken to) suffer from a general malaise. We are only able to
think about the past semester and the semester to come. We try to process the
experience and apply it to the next semester . . . but we don’t want to. We
want to leave the semester behind and pursue our own interest. But, simply, we
can’t.
All
thoughts are of school, and we can’t do anything else for at least a couple of
days.
After that
comes about a week of not wanting to do anything. We sleep, we veg, we watch TV
and movies. We have aspirations at doing other things, but there’s a lack of
both will and real desire.
Only after
that do we find that our will to do things comes back. We’re rested enough to
do them, as well. Most importantly, our creativity begins to return.
After eight
years of teaching, I’ve observed the pattern enough to recognize it’s real.
Also, there’s no shortcut to speed up the process. It takes time to recover.
Talking it out with colleagues helps (non-teachers really don’t understand),
but the process takes as long as it takes.
That’s
probably the hardest lesson, and what I think it shares most with PTSD.