11 July 2008, Friday

LAST DAY OF INSTITUTE! I am so happy that this “experience” is just about over. A few people have said how its gone by so fast, in I guess in some ways it has – mainly how fast the weekends went, but I don’t think it went by all that fast. It was a lot of long nights, longer sessions, and challenging time in the classroom. However, I have managed to survive without coffee and, for the most part, not giving up my running time. It’s a miserable experience but I will leave institute a better teacher than when I came in – though that might not be saying too much. It’s amazing how much less bitter/angry/frustrated I feel since I’ve gotten slightly more sleep this week. This is not to say that I have suddenly changed my mind about anything else that I’ve written previously – I still think there’s a lot of things that could be changed about institute to make me a much better teacher than I am not – but when I get more sleep its so much easier to see things as less negative when I’m better rested. I wouldn’t call it “well rested” by any means yet but it’s beating the 5 hours I was getting the first couple weeks.