First and foremost, the greetings. So, we (my wife Shannon and I) took off down I-95 to visit Kate and Dania down in New Haven. It was a fantastic time; of course, getting there was our first adventure, ending up in Danbury (a whole quarter of the state away from New Haven) due to a little mishap with my mental directions. Oh, well. Afterwards, Kate, Dania, Shannon and I went out for pizza (Pepe's world famous, the best brick oven pie I've had, so far as I can tell; Burlington's American Flatbread is a close second), a visit to an IKEA (let me tell you, best store EVER!), and a nice New Haven pub for some Guinness. This was really the highlight of the weekend for us; Kate and Dania are fantastic people, and we just had a blast. Kate and I had already met in Georgetown, ME two summers ago, but I had never met Dania, and Shannon had never met the both of them. Well, now, Shannon believes she was separated from Dania at birth, and her quote about Kate? "She's fantastic. I heart the Kate." That's Shannon-code for awesome. :) We hit up Mystic after that. Great place; loved the Seaport and the Aquarium. Those are just things we've always liked doing, and though we're not normally tourists like that, we enjoyed being in the throes of it for a while. Of course, the Friendly's off the Interstate is a place you should avoid. Incompetent management. So, that was my weekend. Wonderful way to round out my April break and head back to school. I only hope we get to meet up with Kate and Dania soon...in Burlington, VT (we also talked about that at the bar) or anywhere. We'll see what happens. And now, the farewell. My first entry at sitDiary was almost four years ago. Back then, I was an angry, immature, jaded college student. Now, it's 2007. My last entry will see me off as a teacher, relating to those same kids, the same kids that I was once; my last entry bids a farewell from the person I hardly thought I had a chance to become when I started. It's insane how much you change in four years, how much you grow up. And in working with kids, I've realized that a change in personality, maturity, or simply focus in lifestyle may necessitate other changes. So, goodbye, sit. And now, you may ask, where am I going? Well, two places, actually. First and foremost: my personal chronicles will be relocated to livejournal. I'm going to leave these up for a while, though. I'd at least like to leave them up, so that I can read through them again. Second: I've come to realize that, as an educator, it's important to reflect on the goings-on of the world of education in a more professional manner. My friend Erik has a blog that does this somewhat, and that site will be separate completely from my personal blog (it's an email address thing). So, here it is. Fare thee well, my friend. It is time to move on.

You know you're a teacher when you dream about teaching class, and what you're gonna teach when you get back to school from vacation. This morning, Shannon and I are heading to Connecticut to visit Dania and Kate, New Haven, and Mystic Seaport. Back on Sunday night! Woohoo!

I remember only vaguely when college became different for me than it had been during my first two years. It was a cold day. I was on break, and I was home, talking to my father about the life that he and my mother were so good at hiding from us. It was my junior year, second year at Orono, and I was trying desperately to turn my sinking ship of an undergraduate career around. Because my father was in the Navy, we were always moving around, and always finding ourselves in new places and situations. Of course, all that suddenly became suspect in San Diego, where I remember doing anything to find money for food, gas, or just about anything. I was the oldest, so when Mom told us to do those things, I didn't question, because I already understood the necessity of what I was doing. I remember scrounging through couch cushions, I remember Mom asking me to sell my baseball card collection. Shit like that. Shit that no kid should have to endure. Well, that was only the tip of the iceberg. Turns out, nothing we owned as a family ever really stayed or amounted to anything. Our stuff constantly got repossessed, but I never knew why. Turns out that we never made payments where any of our stuff was kept; most of our family belongings from our early childhoods were auctioned off long ago. We never owned a house; turns out we always rented because we could never get approved for a mortgage, and with the debt problems that my mother would create and my father would try to combat, we could never save for a down payment. We never made any progress, and it took my father and my family years to get back to square one. So, I resolved that I would never let my life turn out to be like that. It was too painful, and that gave me enough motive to work hard, wish for a little luck, and at the very least, not put my future spouse (now Shannon) or my children through that. That motive, and my passion for educating people, got me through. So here I am. I had hoped that, by the end of this school year, that once I had a steady stake in my job, Shannon and I would close on a house and start tucking financial equity and a retirement nest egg away. My grave fear is that if something would happen to me at 50, like Shannon's father, I would have nothing to pass on, nothing to show for my life. Hell, I'm scared of that, even if I die at 75. I got a taste of just how I would want to be living at that age. One of my colleagues, Sully, has been teaching for 40 years. Owns a beautiful house, plays golf and watches TV with his wife. Brings people over, has grandkids, is happy. He taught students math for 40 years, a profession that doesn't pay as well as a mathematician could earn elsewhere. Yet, life is comfortable for the Sullivans, and they are happy and secure, and will be for the rest of their lives. Their debts are secured. They don't owe anyone a minute of their time or a dollar of their money if they wish, and they've earned it. So, naturally, I feel like, in 40 years, if Shannon and I do the same thing, we can have the same thing. Then, what's the road block, you might ask? Well, I don't know. I wish I could tell you, so that I might figure it out and make it better, but I can't. I know Shannon's paranoid about debt, and about getting started on things like houses, especially so soon. That's what we've spent the last hour and a half arguing about. I can't convince her that the idea of buying a house, of paving our own financial security, is something that you want to start as soon as possible. I can't convince her that procrastinating on that aspect of your life is no different than procrastinating on chores or homework: the longer it sits, the more you feel like you don't want to do it, or shouldn't, and then when the pressure's on, when it's 11:59:59 PM, you'll try to do it and you'll do a shitty job and it'll be too late. I can't convince her that debt is unavoidable, and can be used to your advantage; I can't convince her that it'd take a lifetime of living in apartments to save enough money to buy a house, the only method she'd ever be truly comfortable with. I feel like Shannon doesn't see what I mean, like my communication with her is somehow getting lost. All I heard from our discussion (to put it on as lightly as varnish on a bookshelf) was how a house was a not for us. We can't: it's too soon. We don't have enough money. We can't this. We don't that. All I heard was about how paranoid my wife was that our debt would swallow us whole. And it frustrates me, just because I saw that after graduation, after life had settled down and the initial anxiety of teaching had subsided, things would look more secure, and the broader picture of life as a teacher would look more promising. Debt or not, I have been convinced that whatever we have to do to get what we want in life is manageable, so long as we start early, and, like it or not, my confidence has once again been shaken, and I don't know what I did or said to make that confidence seem ambiguous or unfounded. I've been telling Shannon for years that no matter what, student loans, credit cards, mortgages, and the like, that we'll be all right, that they're simply means to an end, and that come hell or high water, we'll live the rest of our lives with more to show than if we hadn't taken on those ventures. I've never seen anyone pay for a house or a college education or a car in cash, and the people that use debt responsibly don't end up going to debtor's prison. I say these things and I know them, but I just feel like the message is lost. Not that I'm being ignored, but that my own wife doesn't believe me. I'm going to go to bed wishing she would.

In the mail this week: Dear Mike: Please be advised that I intend to nominate you for a second probationary contract for school year 2007-2008. My nomination is subject to approval by the Board of Directors. Yeah, seven months of worry, finally over. Go figure that I'll be sitting on a panel about how to survive your first year in front of a bunch of interns going for their master's degrees in education. The person assembling the panel is probably assuming I know more about education than they do. If only she knew. A full week of Senior Project Presentations is over for our kids, and all of my advisees actually passed! This makes me happy, mostly because there were a few I was worried about. Coincidentally, presentations became a good forum for our students to confront their flaws and celebrate their strengths. That makes the chaos and the stress more than worthwhile. And now comes the final stretch. Energy, building rollercoasters and rockets in class. Graduation. Beginning my summer employment in Waldoboro in June. It's so close, and hard to believe it was over so fast. But, for now, I get to enjoy my vacation, and do all of those things I said I'd be doing in the last entry. It's funny that those laundry lists very rarely get done. Maybe this break I'll actually do all of it.

You know, it's strange that my job offers me so many perks, and yet, there are so many drawbacks. Yesterday was a really tough day that capped a really tough week. I was working with some curriculum that my students weren't used to: strike one. I had a bad falling out with another student that got really emotionally heated, over something really stupid: strike two. The third strike? My third (and consequently last) supervisory observation was yesterday. The class that was being observed actually went rather well. I had good control of the class at the beginning, transitioned really well into the day's activity, and for about twenty minutes, the observer stayed back, eyes glued to her computer, while I circulated the room answering questions. Things were going pretty smoothly. Then, for no apparent reason, the observer puts down her compie (you could literally hear the snap of the glue) and leaves. Just leaves. So, I'm secretly, deep down, freaking out because I thought I had done something completely wrong. Five minutes later, Claudia is back. Then she asks me what I'm doing with the next block. It's a study hall, so I'm thinking 'debriefing' so that I could finally get the cycle of supervisory hell over with. Then she tells me that she doesn't want to debrief, but wants to pop in at a 'random time'. Random time? WTF? She meant to tell me that she had a set time to 'drop in', which is a terrible way to do a supervisory observation, in my opinion, and then she TELLS ME when? Whatever. In addition, one of the kids in that class told me afterward, point blank, that she's not learning anything, that she learns better through lectures and other associated traditionalist tools-of-the-trade. Go figure that educators, on the whole, dedicate 90 percent of their time trying to AVOID lecturing. Yeah, it's been rough. But, there's the good news. Our April break starts in about two weeks, and I'm looking forward to some road trips: Orono; Nantucket, possibly; Connecticut; a few other places. I'm looking forward to a day when I can clean my classroom (yeah, teachers use their vacation time for that). I'm looking forward to an 8:00 alarm as opposed to 5:00, I'm looking forward to a break from my kids. Best part? My classes shut down the week before, so that everyone can present their Senior Presentations. All I have to do is sit on panels and work with my advisees. It's gonna be a sweet two weeks. Bought a new car three weeks ago. I've been cruising around in my Scion xA like it's a Lamborghini, but I don't really care. It was a present to myself for getting ever closer to the close of my first year. Besides, my Geo was falling apart. Rusted through on the rocker panels and about to eclipse 178000 miles. I sold it to one of the other physics teachers for 200 bucks. Shannon and I are loving married life, but she's definitely not liking working for the corporate devil. Every day, we find out a little more about health insurance than we ever wanted to know. It tends to get a little gross, so we try to ban work from conversation. It usually doesn't work. So, that's life...going well, but still stressful. Stressful enough that the crick in my neck wants to stay, and that I am starting to wake up feeling the absence of caffeine. Yet another sign: I'm officially joining the ranks. ;)

DIARY So, it turns out that some of you may not be able to see the font that I have this diary written in. If you can't see the Sans Serif-ey goodness, and you instead see a cold, Serif-ed font, then you should try to download a font called Futura. It's fantastic, and I use it for a lot of my curricular documents at school. Friendly on the eyes and mind. MARRIED LIFE Shannon and I finally will have the opportunity to live together. She starts her new job as a Customer Care Associate at Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield in South Portland. $12 an hour to answer phones and emails is a big boost, believe it or not: we save on the commute, and she rakes in more. And, finally, we're not a weekend couple. Finally. MASSACHUSETTS On Thursday, I'll be on my way to Nantucket for two days to visit my friend Erik, who works at Nantucket Historical Association. It'll be good to see him, and it'll also be good to enjoy some of my break in a somewhat far away place before I make the long stretch from February break to April break (almost 8 weeks). SCHOOL So, our nightmare is finally over at school, and our dictatorial principal is finally gone. I won't divulge the details. You can ask me for them. But, this is good because unrest among the staff was tremendously high. I was one of the few first-year teachers that actually took a stand and helped to stage the protest we did about having this man as our leader. Things are looking up for sure. SCHOOL IS My teaching neighbor is heading to Florida today. I think things are starting to look up for her as well, finally. Her ex (I am pretty sure I can call him an ex now) leaves for Iraq in a few weeks, and you can still tell that that takes a toll on her, but the new guy in her life is making her happy, and she never gets sick of his company. It's a start for her. BABY Nathaniel Patrick Luczak was born on February 15, 2007, at 11:28 PM. He is 7 pounds and 4.5 ounces of complete and utter cuteness. He's a pretty calm baby, too. He's done nothing but sleep for my sister. Even the bilirubin test didn't really shake him from his sleep. It was wonderful to hold him, and it made me want kids for just a moment. CONTRACT My superintendent sent me an email a few days ago, and I thought my job was sunk. I got very scared, especially since I had shown my face at the emergency school board meeting in silent protest with about 60 other teachers. I open the email to find that the superintendent was asking if I (along with all other teachers in their first three years) needed student loan assistance. I think my job is safe.

So, I teach next door to a fantastic 27-year-old English teacher. We get along really well, and have become really good friends; we are definitely younger than the rest of the crowd on our house. the atlantic was born today, and i'll tell you how. the clouds above opened up and let it out. When I met her, I noticed all of the Marine Corps stuff plastered to her car, her desk; even the mug out of which she drinks the coffee I brew in the morning had an Eagle, Globe and Anchor on its circumference. Her boyfriend is a Marine, stationed in North Carolina at Camp Lejeune. i was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere when the water filled every hole, and thousands upon thousands made an ocean making islands where no islands should go. oh no. This particular Marine has been to Iraq, and their relationship endured that trip late in the school year, before I arrived. However, I didn't really know that the pictures of the two of them, the smiles and happiness, were long gone until she asked me if she could talk to me about it one day after classes. those people were overjoyed, they took to their boats. i thought it less like a lake, and more like a moat. Turns out, they were having problems that I had overcome with Shannon. Insecurity. Distance. Time. The unknown nature of love and their (our) relationship. Then I found out another kicker. He is meant to go to Iraq again in March. the rhythm of my footsteps crossing floodlands to your door have been silenced forever more. the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row, it seems farther than ever before. oh no. That crumbled from petty misunderstandings to fears of civilian life. Miscommunication about desires: children, life together, life after the Corps, happiness. Days when they wouldn't speak, conversations that would end in 'when you decide'. Her in tears after school, tears that tore me apart because they simply looked so painful. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. It's been a month since she finally told him that she couldn't take the way his indecision about their relationship tears her apart. She told him to call her when he finally decided how things would be between the two of them. Well, it has been that month, and she's starting to see that water flow under the bridge. She has been hanging out with a group of friends we now refer to as the 'Tuesday Club': a small group of people that hangs at a bar, has a few beers and a few laughs and forgets about work and troubles of life for a while. We've kind of helped her forget about her troubles, but they're still there, lingering deep. Deep down, she says, she's still torn, and I think, deep down, she's still heartbroken as though it all just happened. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. She actually told me, too, that she feels guilty for spending even more time with another guy, someone who teaches at the other end of our building. This guy seems to make her happy; she seems to enjoy his company. It doesn't make sense to me. Guilty, for Chrissakes. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. i need you so much closer. And as Congress and the President will inevitably fight over troop escalation and a way to win a war we shouldn't be fighting, I can't help but see that the true casualties of war should be counted at home as well as abroad. The casualties of war at home are relationships, hopes, futures. They are loves, feelings, families. Those graveyards are much larger than Arlington, much larger than the ones in our towns where dead soldiers happen to rest. so come on, come on. War doesn't just kill soldiers. so come on, come on. War doesn't just kill airmen, Marines, or sailors. so come on, come on. War kills a piece of all of us. so come on, come on. Even if those soldiers come home alive.

On division of learning: Although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them. On nature: Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. On physicists and energy: For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy. On the atomic bomb: I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. On teachers: Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation. On higher learning: I learned from her that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion. On physics: Dear Mrs. Chown, Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is. Best wishes, Richard Feynman. ------------------------------------------- Bless you, Mr. Feynman.

So, turns out that I really DID make it through to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and eventually, MLK. Who knew I'd actually survive a full semester of classes. God knows I have had plenty of sabotage attempts along the way. I never knew working in school would continue to be so bloody, so political. Oh, well. Such is life. One of the alumni from the school died last week. He was a kid from our Academy in the school, as well, so that made things very hard for us. The morning we all heard, one of my teaching neighbors (a good friend, too) was crying when we got called to an emergency staff meeting. I thought after I had heard and saw everyone around me in grief or distant shock that somehow, I'd be able to take it. Well, turns out that this particular student, a very loved, respected member of our community, was captain of the hockey team. I have three of the hockey players, all seniors, and the heartbreak came when I saw them, red-eyed, hunched over, grieving. It was seeing them that wrenched my stomach, and convinced me that it would be a long day for everyone. I guess the moral of this last week is that somehow, I have worked my own feelings for my kids into the grooves of my existence at my school. I didn't quite realize how much I care for all of them until last Tuesday. It was one of the strangest revelations I came to, and it meant more than anything I've done this year. That made my Thursday even better. For the end of the semester, my students are all building simple AM radios from handmade components. The only thing I supply previously made is a diode (unless they want to make their own). Three of my students, by way of their own soldering guns and glue sticks, hammered out their own simple radios and made them work. They heard a lot of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and NPR. It was fantastic to see the looks on their faces. You should have seen them. They stared at their chintzy looking radios, one hand holding open a capacitor made of cardboard and aluminum foil, the other on the shortcut of an adjustable coil, and then looked at me, only to say "that's so awesome" or "that's so weird", in complete awe. One student heard Backstreet Boys, and couldn't help but dance quietly in her seat. It was fantastic. At that point, my own emotional investment in our class took me over. I couldn't help it. I cried after that class, because it was amazing to know that something had gome smoothly, and that my students felt like they were learning something. Then I jumped around in the pod after the bell rang to dismiss everyone. It was wonderful, I tell ya. It was the moment I signed on for. It's easy to sit in this coffee shop in Bath on MLK, no school to teach, nothing to do but watch the snow falling in town, and write about how much I've come to love my work, despite the politics and the bitching, despite all the rough times. I only hope that you have experienced a moment like that for yourself, or that someday, you will. That's the school front. Married life continues to be good, but rough. Shannon and I still live half-apart, and I'm wondering if I shouldn't leave my school so that we might find better job opportunities for Shannon further south. All I know is that the pickings are slim for her and plentiful for me, and I wonder whether or not we can take another semester of living apart, especially since I'm considering returning to the University for Upward Bound again this summer. That will be yet another seven weeks apart, and I am not sure if that is something I can handle. But, Shannon and I always hang in there, always keep trucking through, as usual. It's never been an option to lose one another. So, that's life at January. Tomorrow, I'll pray for a school cancellation because of the snow, and hope that I can steal an internet connection at home so that I can get some more work done. We'll see how that works out. ;)

Ah, a new year. Finally. And with the new year, my break and my first semester as a teacher is finally drawing to a close. My resolutions are: 1) Write here more often. 2) Finish off the Special Ed correspondence course. Finally. 3) Lose an undisclosed amount of weight. 4) Plan my lessons more than 24 hours in advance. 5) Relearn general relativity, single and double finite potential well stuff, and, in general, get to be great at physics again (I'm kinda rusty). 6) Go to the Faroes this year. 7) Convince Shannon to go to the Faroes this year. 8) Convince Shannon to go to New York City. 9) Stop being so critical of myself.

I never thought that the thirty-minute commute that I now experience from Biddeford to North Berwick would fly by me, just like every single day, every single period, every presentation, demonstration, every research project and every complaint about the way I grade or the deadlines I set. I am looking at this diary, neglected and dusty, and it's mid-October, already one-sixth of the way through the tenure of my yellow, crumpled, one-year probationary teaching contract. Now, it's not that the kids are bad. They're not, believe me. They're good kids, and they want to do well. But the truth of the matter is that because my class is required in order to depart with a diploma, things are different. I don't have classrooms so easily converted to a love of physics. I don't have a small legion of students who are developing their passion for learning, their passion for fulfillment of curiosity. I have instead an army of drones, many of whom can't write a lab report, take a piece of data, form a scientific argument, and will never care to do so again after my class. My passion for my science isn't a candle that burns slowly, calmly, a subject of attraction, a beacon of steady and profound enlightenment for my students. It is a floodlamp shining directly into their deer-eyes, blinding them cruelly unless they were smart enough to bring sunglasses and enjoy the view of the filaments. So, what exactly has kept me going? It's not the money. Trust me, it's not the money. It's not my fellow teachers, who are a month in and are feeling the same strain as me, who has less experience than almost four-fifths of the staff. It's not title, it's not the touted idea that teachers have one of the most difficult jobs, and one of the most rewarding. I've actually found it interesting that the people who tell me teaching is 'rewarding' have never had any idea what education is or should be. Because the best teachers, those most interested in education, I've found, don't get into it for a reward for themselves. Instead, it's the feeling that I got when one of my students that I help after school felt for one moment that she could handle physics when a group of caseworkers and edtechs believe she can't. It's the feeling of reaching out to the kid in the black sweater, who has openly admitted she hates your class and your curriculum, and in so doing, finding a way to give her the motivation she needs simply to do what she must do. It's the idea that, slowly but surely, you can chip away at the hard, ignorant stone surrounding the guy who knows he's intelligent, can't understand those who aren't, and puts them down as often as he feels he should. It's the sight of completed projects, balances made of straws, cups, paper mache, pins and cardboard, and the idea that they made them, they used them, they knew for just a second that maybe they are capable, and were all along. It's the idea that when the bell rings at 7:55, it's a new day and the bumps in the road, while unknown to you, might be interrupted by short bursts of straightaway. It's hearing from a best friend just before my wedding that what I would be doing is not going to be personally rewarding, but instead, important. Crucial, even. It's coming home, tired beyond belief, knowing that someday, somewhere, one of your students will need what you teach them, and also hoping that when that day comes, they will not thank you, but that they will instead thank themselves. That's the reward I seek. That's what I've been wishing for. That my students leave my room on June 10, 2006 and graduate not with the knowledge necessary to live in a world where knowledge is not free, but instead the will and the strength to create knowledge without me, or any other teacher. If one student has that from me this year, that will and strength, then I can go home happy on June 10. All that I will wish for is the chance to do it one more time. --------------------------------------------- I'm sorry for those of you who read this, but I just had to get that out. Let's get onto news, shall we? So, Shannon and I are finally married. We were married on August 19th, 2006, in a small ceremony held at Library Park in Bath. After fifteen minutes of me fumbling my vows and snapping tons of pictures, we proceeded to the best wedding reception we could have asked for: a gathering of close friends and a few family members for pizza and beer at a local pizza place. Cheap, easy, and most of all, memorable. A lot of people told us that it was the best reception they had ever attended (we believed those who had been to other weddings). We now live in Biddeford, Maine, so that I might commute to my school in reasonable time. Shannon works in Bath full-time, and has arranged a four-day week so that we might have more time together. It really is a nice arrangement. We are thankful for health insurance: Shannon needs knee work, and I need a cleaning. Such is married life for two of the most eccentrically simple people we know. Maybe, when I get around to it, I'll upload a picture or two. For now, I'm gonna get back to enjoying what continues to tick off of my weekend. Also, one piece of advice: see Memento.

Rest in peace.

So, it has once again been several weeks since I have had a chance to write, and once again, I am here, fighting the powers that be, jotting down what I can before they can drag me by the coattails and yank me back into place. Upward Bound began on June 19th, 2006, and let me tell you, it has been a rollercoaster ride. Imagine, you're a future high school teacher, about to start your first year, with the fortune of having a laboratory to get you ready, so to speak. You teach high school kids, try the stuff you think might not work, and that's it, right? Well, that's what I thought. And I was wrong. All wrong. So, I've been teaching wave physics to kids for five weeks. The majority of them didn't have an inkling about what physics actually was, or an idea that they could actually do it. Many of them were afraid it was just another class that they would fail. One even has no problem with turning things in blank, leaving zeros in her row of a teacher's gradebook. But, get this: they are learning it. Yes. My students, even against their lowest predictions, are learning the Principle of Linear Superposition. They are learning how to model filament bulbs as point sources. They know about nodal lines and they know how Young's Double Slit Experiment works. And in that, I feel what I sense is the greatest feeling an educator can have: the idea that somehow, someway, you didn't teach your students anything, but instead, they taught themselves, and now the ideas are theirs. It's been a great feeling. So, am I content? No. I'm not. Something is wrong in the town of Orono, something fishy. For some reason, the academic staff has been bitching. A lot. About a lot of things, from students and missing assignments, to the rest of the staff that seems to rest on a different front from us. There's the residential staff, who live with the kids in the program, who fill their lives with so much social brouhaha that they have little (if any) time to dedicate to the true heart of the program: academics. There are members of the full-time staff that feel like the kids in the program are six, like they need their hands held and their heads patted at every turn. And we, the academic staff, are starting to look like assholes for assigning homework. For holding kids to high standards. For expecting them to do work, expecting them to take ownership of the education they supposedly want. And then there's my personal life. Shannon and I have had a rough time of it, living apart and alone from one another. I've felt like she resents me for this, and I held the irrational suspicion for a while that she wasn't valuing what I have wanted to do for so long (teach). I think in that time where things got really rough (I didn't see Shannon for 10 days, which for us is incredibly tough), I managed to lose sight of us. And in all the bitching that we have done as an academic staff, I think I lost sight of what I am here for. So I took a drive last night. It was short; maybe five or six minutes, but I realized that it wasn't the bitching or the fighting or the despizing that I lived for. It wasn't competing for ego space in an educational environment where your kids want you for your grade. It was the simple joy of a student in my physics class, so pumped and excited for getting a B- at the five-week point. It was hearing that two students were so bothered by the idea of the Theory of Everything that they needed to find their own, concluding that Pokemon is the secret to unification. It was hearing that the physics was fun, and hearing that student after student wanted to be there, that it was enjoyable to them. It was the idea that a filament bulb held up to a triangular hole with a screen still caused wonder. And the tough times in my relationship with Shannon has taught me that, as a physicist, it's no wonder that I am so obsessed with the ideas of space and time. It's no wonder that I have worked so hard to understand how those things are quantified, and how we can change them as they change us. For some reason, space and time are no longer issues; they are simply reference frames, as opposed to fences, walls, barriers, or currents that tear things apart more often than they bring them together. And it's no wonder that this obsession has led me to compulsively listen to Transatlanticism, Death Cab for Cutie's fourth album, preaching space and time and what they are and why they do what they do. And it's no wonder that I can realize a second can be so eternal, and a meter so abyssal, yet a mile so close, and years so fleeting. Strangely enough, the summer has made me young again, amid all the strange adversity. And amid all the dirt in the trenches, the moments in the sun, away from the rain, this summer has been more than worth it.

So, today is June fifth. The summer already seems to be flying by. It's almost going by too fast, and I have a feeling that there'll be a lot of things I'll want to write down. Therefore, I'm going to start writing again. I'm also going to take the 'friends only' status off the page, since that was just really stupid to begin with. Here's a picture of my life as of now. Currently, I am living at a frat house on the UMaine campus. My room is a nondescript, L-shaped space, brick painted white, walls dark blue. Random stuff is strewn everywhere. My computer is set peacefully on an aluminum desk. This is the status at which I come to rest, after almost 1,000 miles of driving in the past week. I've been from Old Town to Bath to Burlington, VT, to Bath (on a spare tire for about half of that segment of the trip) to Orono. It's been so surreal, so flighty. It couldn't have happened more quickly. Upward Bound hasn't started yet. Noble High School has just graduated their seniors. It's so hard to just twiddle my thumbs and wait for all of this to happen. Tomorrow I'll wake up, I'll still be on vacation, I'll still be a sales associate at a dumpy store going out of business. The picture that my friend Crystal took of me and Shannon four and a half years ago is on my windowsill, just in front of a Scottish flag that she bought me. I have so much ahead, yes, but none of it has started yet. I'm gonna be in bed, hurrying up and waiting.

You know, I never thought I'd see the day that I graduated. I always thought I'd just keep churning. Keep taking classes and keep buying books and keep careening into debt, all the while continuing to learn without ever knowing if I'd get to use the knowledge I was paying for. Well, now, finally, I am an alumnus of the University of Maine. I have my BA in Physics. I walked down the side of the floor of Alfond Arena to sit for a three-hour ceremony on May 13th, 2006. Also, I have my jobs for the summer and fall. I am a physics instructor for Upward Bound, basically working for peanuts while teaching for seven weeks. In the fall, I get to start my dream job: physics teacher at Noble High School in North Berwick, Maine. I start that in late August, and start teaching the first week in September. But, until then, I'm sitting around on my thumbs, waiting for Upward Bound to start, or RadioShack to close, whatever comes first. I have to admit, I never thought I'd dread being out of school. Not for a second. But I do. I feel like I should be somewhere else, either in class or doing homework or worrying about work or money or time. But, I don't worry about any of those things. I am simply passing the time here, waiting for the days off when I can drive home to see Shannon, or my family. Quite frankly, it sucks. I want my jobs to start. Moral of my story? Stay in school as long as you possibly can. ^^0

So, I had the spring break to top all spring breaks this past two weeks. Here is a run down day to day of just what I did with my break. Friday, March 3rd: Started this day at around midnight to counsel my roommate and her boyfriend. She was trying to drink herself to death, and he was being a dick about it. They have communication issues, basically. Woke up at six in the morning to get my teeth cleaned. Everything looked good except the cavity on tooth 15. Ouch. After that, dubbed around and rested up for my trip to Quebec. Also found out that my 19 year old sister is pregnant, and getting married in a week. Somehow, I am left with the responsibility of organizing the notary. Saturday, March 4th: Drove up to Quebec with Shannon. Left around eight AM with caffeine and scones in our stomachs. Quebec is about a five-hour drive from Bath, so we were buckled in for a long ride. We crossed the border and were lightly interrogated by the border patrol. After that, we wandered around the town, checked into our hotel, had killer escargot, pizza, and dessert at a pizzaria in the new city, watched people skate down an ice-covered ramp in the city center, and drank at the pub we fell for there. Went to bed. Sunday, March 5th: Woke up and visited a small hat store at 42 rue Garneau in the old city and got a bitchin' chapeau. It looks really good on me. :) Checked out of the hotel, found out that the Quebecois don't call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a "Royale with Cheese" on account of the metric system, had a really good crepe for breakfast, and off we went. (BTW, I should have some pics from Quebec if they didn't turn out too badly, and if I can get them scanned.) Monday, March 6th: Went to my doctor's office for a physical. Apparently, minus bloodwork, I'm as healthy as a horse, but could afford to lose a few pounds. Drove up to Orono, and found four teaching jobs to apply for. The rush to find a teaching job has begun. Tuesday, March 7th: Applied for four teaching jobs. Wednesday, March 8th: Visited RadioShack. I have been on vacation for about six days, and apparently the store is in chaos. One of our less mature associates is driving the rest of them nuts, sales are slipping, and no one has any confidence that things can get better. Everyone wants me back. Thursday, March 9th: Went to Target to get Alyssa and Paul's wedding present. I choose a Brita pitcher. Lovely me. I also land the notary: the wife of my former debate coach. She thinks initially that she's doing the wedding for Shannon and me. She is floored to find out that she is not. Friday, March 10th: Alyssa and Paul are married, and after a huge Dudley feast, guess where they decide to spend their first night married? That's right. They follow me up to Orono and spend the night in my apartment. Saturday, March 11th: Took Alyssa and Paul out to lunch, and saw them off. (Yes, they drove two hours to spend the night at my apartment. Don't ask me to make sense of it.) Reported in to work after a week of paid vacation to find that EVERYONE missed me. Go figure. Also, go figure that a week of paid vacation gave me more pay than a week of regular work. Sunday, March 12th: Work. Monday, March 13th: Day off from work. Can't remember what I did with myself. Tuesday, March 14th: Work. Wednesday, March 15th: Day off from work. Thursday, March 16th: Work. Friday, March 17th: Find out that my RS location is closing, along with 500 other stores in the country. Apparently, it has nothing to do with us, but instead that bad real estate is the factor (which I believe, since the place is a dump). I am eligible for a closing bonus (up to two and a half weeks depending on how long we have to wait to find out), a severance package or a transfer. Saturday, March 18th: Work. Eileen, the associate I started with from day one at Old Town RadioShack, finds out about the closing. She is depressed. Sunday, March 19th: Work, and classes tomorrow.

Some of you may think that I dropped out of this place. Well, while this is not totally true, I don’t come around here often anymore. Prose just isn’t my thing anymore. It’s too long. It’s too hard to read anymore for me. I think you all need to know what I’m up to again, sure, but it’s hard to explain why I haven’t written here on SD. I'll be back, though, I promise, after this entry is done. This Winter Break, I had a revelation. Those of you who know me or read my diary know that I love teaching, and that it is my only true occupational passion in life. I love teaching people, I love seeing people learn. I love the screams and the smiles on their faces when they revel in a moment of, well…revelation. These moments are sacred and they make me feel alive. But not everyone gets to experience these moments. Some people live eternally in that darkness, the darkness of no knowledge, no learning. Yet, everyone is entitled to feel that way, to learn. It is not what I want to be my job, but I feel that teaching is our duty. We all have a duty to teach one another, and my duty started one week ago. I applied for Teach For America. The website is http://www.teachforamerica.org. I could go one of many places, but wherever I go, it will no doubt be like teaching in another world. If I am accepted. If I am accepted, I will be one out of nine, or one of two thousand, selected from eighteen-thousand. If you are curious as to what I’ve been up to over the past few months, take a mosey on over to http://sirmink.deviantart.com. I have gotten back into my poetry hand and it feels really good. It’s a form that has been lost for me since high school, a form that feels more complete than the prose I write now. And although I don’t write poetry often, when I do, it’s orgasmic. It’s fulfilling, it’s complete, it’s a cold Coca-Cola on a warm February night in the face of an approaching storm. It’s lovely, and thank you, Tammy, for the journal, it now houses the rough stuff of what you see at deviantart. I posted a 3.67 GPA last semester, while working nearly full-time at RadioShack. This comes in the face of three courses: Feminist Theory, which is a bear of a course in philosophy and feminist discourse, a course that the professor thought I was unprepared for. British Women’s Literature, a course that refreshed my love for literature and poetry, my love for form over function. Women, Health, and the Environment, home of deadly silences over even deadlier material, home to the knowledge of the world that no one wants to hear. 3.67. That’s all that’s important. So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I graduate and get married in May. Life can’t get much better. As far as SD, well, I’ll be around, but I’ll also be living. I don’t write much, but when I do, it’s orgasmic. I’ve said that before, I know, but I realize that a couple of you really wanted to know just where I’ve been. Just what I do. I’ve been living, and it’s been so fast, I hardly have the keystrokes to catch up. Well, just remember that I am around, and living and breathing and dying until my very last death, and living in the process. It’s poetry under a strobe light, counting change on my desk and waiting paycheck to paycheck like so many others do. It’s killer, the feeling that so much waits for me. It’s all unexposed film, it’s all free and clear of dust and grime. Just bear in mind that while I’m wading through, I haven’t left you all behind, or forgotten about you. I just do so much and get so distracted, it’s almost as though I exist in too many spheres, and there just isn’t enough time in a day, or energy in the food I eat or the water I drink. I have not forgotten you. Any of you. From the neighbors I left in third grade, to my baseball friends in San Diego. To Washington, and to memories of my relatives, and the friends who never were my friends. To Texas, to memories of band, and Chris and Sarah and 1706 Village East Drive. To Bath, Maine, and to band and theatre. To Erin and the ‘D’ in the glow in the dark tape, to Kelly and my worst mistakes that were never your fault. To Tammy, to Ashley, to Shannon, who has won my heart (and my humor and my soul and my sanity). To Maine Maritime, to the sea and to the ship and to lines and to formations, to chastity and how much I longed to hold onto it, for whatever reasons I might have had. To Orono, to the release of a man who never really learned that living involved faith in absence. I have never forgotten any of you. You have been with me, if not in body, then in spirit, for as long as I’ve known you. I may be silent, I may be absentminded, and I may be infected with an incurable wanderlust, but I do not forget. Have a nice night. There is someone waiting for me, and she waits for no one.

Has anyone ever tried to tell you that what you were doing with your life wasn't important, or that they're suddenly better than you because of their grades? Or because you thought it was more important to get rest for work and your job than it was to get tanked? Well, that just happened to me. And it's not a good feeling. My job interview in Dexter is Monday. I don't give a shit if you think that's not important.

So, I have been absent for almost a month, as Dania puts it, and I thought it was time to write again. I've taken a break from SD for a few reasons: 1) It was getting to the point where, for a while, writing here wasn't doing me any good. It wasn't making me feel better, wasn't giving me any therapy to the outside world like it normally does. Instead, I've been working a little more on poetic stuff, and that can be found here. 2) I've really been conflicted over this year, and have had too much, yet too little, to write about. I'm finding that in the midst of the business, the motivation just doesn't exist because I'm torn about writing about everything that is going on in my head, and writing about nothing at all. 3) I've been really homesick, and I've found myself wondering a lot about other people, places, things. Just distraction in general. But now, I'm ready to return, and I have plenty to write about. For example, a physics teacher position has opened up in Dexter. Apparently, the teacher there just found another job that was better, and jumped ship. I'm sending in my resume, cover letter, and references tomorrow, despite the fact that the school would want me by December 4th, despite the fact that I won't graduate until May. If I get the job, I can do what I love while making tons of money and taking my last classes here at UMaine. Good stuff. My company has gone totally stupid on me. The natural, primary function of a RadioShack Sales Associate is to...sell. Well, the company has decided we don't know how to do that anymore. We don't know how to do our jobs. So they've invented all this shit that we have to wear on our belts that reminds us how to do our jobs. And all the while, we're still stuck making pennies over minimum wage. The pay raises we were supposed to get in July are apparently still being hotly contested. Do we get them, or do we not? And not only that, I'm finding that I'm having trouble living in dorms. My roommate is never around, and I kinda miss sharing a room with someone who's there all the time. No offense against Jamie, who's a good guy that I like a lot. I just feel like I wake him up a lot. That, and Shannon's roommate is starting to show her true colors. She's bossy. She's negative. She's pushy. She's inconsiderate to others who happen not to have her name. She's wasteful, and she has a BAD conception of what is 'disgusting'. She treats people like shit when things don't go her way. I can't stand that. I like her, and all, but sometimes I wonder how someone can be the way she is. And I KNOW Shannon's not happy about the way things are going because her room is always above sleeping temperature, mostly due to the fact that they have a third roommate: a blue-yellow salamander named September. It isn't fair that Shannon can't sleep at night simply because the room is kept warm for that lizard. If that's not inconsiderate, I don't know what is. And when she tells me that I can't leave CLEAN, HOT dishwater in the sink, well, then, that's the last straw. That's when I stop doing dishes. It just seems like I've grown up way too fast, and I can't say anything about the objections I have to the way people act and treat one another. Almost like being immature must be rewarded by the mature, almost like mature people must keep their mouths shut, for fear of losing their maturity to immaturity. It's unfair, but that makes me want out of here even more. I just want to have that job in Dexter, teaching and living with Shannon and Shannon only, with no other cares. It's so close, yet so far, and I can't stand it. But yeah. So, that's it. I'm back. With a vengeance. It feels good once again. :)

the tiny atoms in our hands, in our lips, as we move together and kiss, repel, lightly at first, then angrily, vehemently resisting. it's miraculous, then, that i can feel your heartbeat, feel you breathe, feel my heart skip a beat as our lips separate, and having never truly touched you, i can feel you across the infinite impasse of a single angstrom.