Sunday, June 27, 2004

Term 3, Week 1, Day 0

4 weeks really isn't enough no matter what non-teachers say about our holidays. Dan's officially in the bluest of moods and I'm ambivalent, bordering on depressed and thinking about shopping even though I shouldn't be. Thinking about shopping is usually my way of coping with extreme stress and come tomorrow, extreme stress shall be upon me. The exams are tomorrow and that means, marking begins on Tuesday and on top of that, Dan goes into reservist the week after and I'm not sure if I like the idea of him being away for 12 days in an army camp in a far flung corner of Singapore being grumpy. And the organising nightmare of the JC debates also begins round about the same time - so extreme stress.

It seems somewhat strange to me that things that so many of the things that I should be concerned over things that are trivial in the larger scheme of life. Truly, I don't see why I should have to lose sleep over marking, or a competition that no one is going to remember 2 months from now or the fact that my debate team isn't ready for the competition.

Perhaps, if I didn't have to worry about these things, I could better spend my time holding Dan's hand while he worries about working signal sets that he cannot, for the life of him, remember how to handle. Or perhaps, I could worry about having a kid. Right, left and centre, people are quietly putting pressure on me to have a kid. But I can't accede to their wishes because I worry about leaving my students in the lurch if I went off on extended maternity leave during a time that they perceive as the most important time of their lives. And that, unlike the little upstart who has tried to make me feel guilty for leaving her in the lurch this holidays, does tweak at my conscience. I have some sort of attachment to them and would like to see them, my first full batch of students through their 2 years of pre-university education. So, no, I can't think about having a child, not until late next year, like after the first week of November.

And, I have a thing against having end of year babies. Years of psychology, wisdom from my occasionally not so wise mother and from what I've seen teaching 8 year olds, year end babies tend to lose in the game of catch up during their first few years in school. Even if I don't whip out scientific proof and if you think carefully about it, it makes sense. We all know that when kids are young, within a span of 6 months, they pick up a whole lot of crap and their motor, intellectual and social abilities can change a whole lot. So, compare a child born in January to a child born in December in the same year. Big difference. Of course, Dan believes the contrary because both he and his brother were both year end kids, but seriously, if you heard the childhood stories about them, once against, the hypothesis stands true.

So I don't know about kids and truthfully, it's not that I don't want them, although some days after baby sitting my brother's two brats, I'm not far from that, it's more I don't have time to have them now and it's the truth. Truth is, that sucks. Shouldn't it be the case of we have them when we're ready to have them and not so much when our jobs allow us the time to have them?

That's the thought that's breeding resentment in my head as I embark on Term 3 Week 1.

Ondine tossed this thought in at 16:13

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