Summer Loving

I have decided that I am Facebook friends with way too many teachers.  Ordinarily I absolutely love this fact because teachers always have really crazy and funny stories.  Teaching is incredibly important, admirable, fulfilling, and extremely difficult.  But it is this time of year that being Facebook friends with teachers is almost unbearable.  If I have to read one more countdown to summer I really might cry.  It is exacerbated by the fact that my husband is a teacher.  Kyle is probably cringing as he reads this so let me preface this by saying that I know that teachers work over the summer and put in a lot of extra beyond just what goes on in your classroom.  But it is so hard to read statuses that say “4 more days until no more alarm clocks for 2 months,” “4 days until the beach,” and “the countdown is on- 4 more days until summer.” 

One of the girls in my small group asked a great question the other day.  She asked me “how do you stand working all the time knowing that there are no summer and winter breaks.”  Starting as kids we are trained that you work hard for several months and then are rewarded with a break.  It starts with pre-school and continues through college.  Then you get a “grown-up” job and realize that the cycle that you are used to has just screeched to a halt.  At first your excitement propels you through your first missed winter or summer break but over time it starts to set in that your life has a whole new pattern.  At first you are like a panicked hamster in a wheel and question how you will ever adjust but eventually your will power subsides and you settle into running the same circle over and over again.  Vacations days help but since your job responsibilities don’t stop you have to find people to cover you, pray that they don’t mess up while you are gone, and then catch back up when you return which can be exhausting.  I wish that all jobs had a way of having something like a summer or winter break but since business never stops neither do we.  Thanks for reading my rant and please know that I have lots of love for teachers (especially my amazing husband) but for right now I am just super jealous of their work schedules!