Long ago my ex-husband (he’s also a writer and a contract faculty person like me with too many jobs) and I ranked the worst months of the year for teachers. A few years after that, we vowed so stop talking about the ranking we’d made because the fact that we’d ranked the months only seemed to worsen them. Like the naming of the bad, bad months made them worse.
Now I’m returning to the ranking because why not and also for me and for many teachers I know they really are the hardest months. Why fight it.
Drumroll please!
Here’s a suspenseful photo!
Gosh, I still love seeing what images come up in the Stock Photos when you type in a word. The photos for suspense were definitely weird.
The worsts months in order of awfulness and why:
October - So much student conferencing. If you work with first-year college students this is also when they start to fall apart because the adrenaline and hype of arriving at school has subsided and reality hits. Why did I move to NYC when I was 18? Why am I paying so much money to go here? What if I hate it here? What should I be doing with my life? I was an “intellectual super weapon in high school” (as one of my students recently so aptly put it) and now I’m failing chemistry. Is my writing professor mad at me? No, she’s not but it would be cool if you came to class and read most of the assigned essays. They are short! And quite beautiful! Also, October is when teachers come off of the high of the summer or whatever small amount of time we had off, and realize wow teaching people to read and write craftily and with care and love is hard, and it’s always hard, and I will be doing it for at least seven more months and probably until I die. Also, Halloween. I’m sorry. It’s a tricky holiday for caregivers especially, though now my kid is 15 and does Halloween mostly with her friends and dad. I recently remembered that I used to disassociate in Spirit Halloween stores, trying to get my head around what my kid could be and what I could be and how much that would cost, and now suddenly I’m holding a fake axe, a clown wig, and a rainbow polyester bustier in the loudest, hottest, most crowded store in New York City. That’s a costume right?
Upsides to October: Halloween candy, fall weather, wool socks, tights, other peoples’ truly inventive costumes, and pretty leaves if you’re in the Northeast.
November - Daylight savings has made it dark at 4:30 and that just makes a lot of people feel sad. I don’t like coming out of six hours worth of teaching into the darkness. DO YOU? Grading. More student breakdowns. Thanksgiving. Are you sensing a theme around my feelings about THE HOLIDAYS. I’m estranged from most of my bio family by choice and it’s the right thing for me, but I’m not immune to feeling left out. Also, it’s really a genocide holiday pretending to a cool holiday. It’s getting really cold too, so yeah November. Upsides to November: This year I have not one, but two Thanksgiving invites with friends so I’m feeling very loved and held. Friendsgiving! Pumpkin pie! Woodstock and Snoopy when they cook a Thanksgiving feast. Go ahead Google it. It’s so freakin’ cute. Snuggling. Voting idiots out of office.
The third most terrible month of the year is February! Christmas is long since over (I do actually like Christmas with it’s lights, tree triming, cookies, and presents). In the Northeast, it’s lately a strange mix of snow, sleet, cold rain, and very gray. Like too much gray sky. Conferencing with students about their drafts is at an epic high, second only to October. Valentine’s Day? Please goddess no. What is February even doing acting like a month? Upsides to February: It’s short.
March comes in at number four for horriblness. Intense grading. Usually pretty rainy and gray. Also, now because of climate change, suddenly 80 degrees! The in like a lion and out like a lamb thing doesn’t really hold up anymore. It’s like all LION or all LAMB or a bit of lion and lamb in each day. Hard to dress for that. Upsides to March: Summer is close. Buds on trees. April is even closer. I have no beefs with April because it is a gorgeous, getting very close to summer month. Here’s a photo that comes up for March. It’s all flowers blooming!
What do you think are the best and worst months? Or maybe you don’t subscribe to this strange ranking of months as if they have personal vendattas against you lol? Let me know.
And now here’s my first stand-up routine ever! I’m going to paywall it for now because hey, a lady has massive bills. Thanks again to Delight Factory and my dearest friends, Elke, Jason, and Meghan for convincing me to give it a try.
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