Why I always wanted to be a teacher....

...so that I can crush the hopes and dreams of my students and grind them into a pile of gravel.

So today I posted the results of the auditions for my advanced choir. It's one of my least favorite days of the year. Couple of girls in particular ended up in tears, girls that I have an affection for. I don't regret my decisions... I just hate this part of it.

But here's the part I really hate. Steadily over the last few years, the returning members have been prone to grumbling right about now. They don't agree with my choices. They think that next year will be bad. One kid even approached me today, concerned about the "declining quality" in the group. Given the fact that I just denied his brother membership, there's a good chance he'll drop.

There's a couple of things here that piss me off. First of all there's the general short-sightedness that teenagers are sometimes prone to. They don't see the larger picture. They don't understand the nature of change. In particular, there's a phenomenon I like to call "Senior Disillusionment" that is particularly annoying: They fight to get to the top, then when they get there, they find themselves bored, dissinterested and resentful of the fact that things aren't as exciting as when they were younger. I guess it's too much to ask for altruism in ones senior year; to have the compassion to turn around and give to the lower classes the same level of inspiration that upperclassmen once gave them. I don't know whats worse, the ones that just dump it all and quit, or the ones that cling on even though they've lost the will to even show up to rehearsal on a regular basis.

The second is simply this... every time a kid jumps ship (or even talks about it) when things start to look bad... I think of all the times I could have and maybe should have done the same, but didn't. (That includes now)

I know it's mostly talk... especially that bunch. And it's far from everyone. But it irks me nonetheless.

In other News: Palpatine vs. ASB Director... It's not much of a match, but I'm a gonna sit back and watch these two mega-mutated monsters trash Tokyo.