Your Brain on Kindergarten

This year, I am living with my dear dear friend, Beth. Her friendship has been more cherished to me than I ever thought a friendship could be. She has been encouraging, understanding, and thoroughly entertaining through every step of my college life. She, like myself, is also student teaching kindergarten this semester. Many evenings we come home, completely exhausted, worn out by our kinder kids, and have really good talks. Those talks typically go one of two ways: deep and introspective or entirely hilarious. During one such evening rant, Beth came up with a lose-your-breath-laughing phrase, that was funny in part because it was so un-ignorably true:

"your brain; your brain on kindergarten"

These are the pictures came to mind:

your brain

your brain on kindergarten

So let me break it down into some specific examples.

After a day of school

Your brain: come home, relax, go do something fun!

Your brain on kindergarten: come home, stare at the wall and try to process all of the absurd things that happened over the past 10 hours.

Spelling words

Your brain: cotton c-o-t-t-o-n, alphabet a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t, smart board s-m-a-r-t b-o-a-r-d

Your brain on kindergarten: cotton k-o-t-n, alphabet a-l-f-u-b-e-t, smart board s-m-r-t b-r-d

Writing a blog post

Your brain: spell things correctly, put "your brain, your brain on kindergarten" examples into correct categories

Your brain on kindergarten: misspell your misspellings and put "your brain, your brain on kindergarten" into the wrong categories

Talking with friends

Your brain: carry intelligent, timely, and relevant conversations

Your brain on kindergarten: say the first few words of your sentence, pause to catch your train of thought, and end up staring blankly into the distance until your friend shakes you back to reality (this one just happened as I was writing this post).

Making breakfast

Your brain: pour coffee, put cream and sugar in coffee, put ice and water into water cup

Your brain on kindergarten: pour coffee, spill coffee, put ice in water cup, drop 5+ pieces of ice, accidentally pour creamer into ice water, rinse and re-pour ice water, put sugar in coffee, accidentally drop entire sugar packet into coffee and don't find it until you finish your coffee 1 hour later

Writing a blog post

Your brain: correctly spell "pour"

Your brain on kindergarten: ask your roommate for help spelling the word "pour" 

Planning for classes

Your brain: complete your planning in a timely fashion while maintaining your sanity

Your brain on kindergarten: fall into a hysterical laughing/crying fit because you realize you haven't planned any of the things you need to teach tomorrow

Stress relief:

Your brain: watch TV, read a book, hang out with friends

Your brain on kindergarten: watch "The Uglified Ducky" on Tumblebooks

So that, my friends is an accurate picture of my life. I get up at 6am, I go to school, I teach, enrich lives, tie shoes, open lunches, settle disputes, and kiss boo boos for 10 hours, come home at 5, and start planning for the next day. 

What's that? You say my social life has disappeared? Yes. I know. And yes, at the end of the day, I usually feel a little something like this:

But here's the secret....I love my job and I love those kids. These days are a joy and they are a gift.

Ciao!