Biorhythms

I am NOT a morning person, and I never have been. My choice of careers (teaching and coaching) did not match up with my biorhythms. I would work better with banker's hours, I believe. Nonetheless, I was in my classroom at 5:30 yesterday morning and 5:55 today. Yuck. What's weird about this, though, is that even though I long to sleep in, and I do sleep in on weekends, I inevitably wake up, fully alert, ten minutes before my alarm rings. It doesn't matter when I go to bed. At 4:35, I wake up. It sucks. Every morning I regret that ten minutes I missed. I'm hoping that when I don't have to wake up as early any more, my body will adjust.

I notice that my body shuts down around 3:00 pm everyday also. I'll be energized and roaring to go at 2:30, when I'm teaching my last class, but a half hour later, ten minutes after the students have left, I'm ready for a nap.

This wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, but I have about a twenty-five minute drive home. That is not the time to be sleepy!

Through years of this schedule, I've gradually learned that bed time is important (it took years because I'm a slow learner). I feel significantly different the next day if I'm in bed by 10:00 rather than 10:45. It's hard for me to believe that the first few years I was teaching, that I would meet with a bunch of other teachers for Thursday night basketball. We'd play until 9:00 or so, and then go to Otto's for a nightcap. I shudder to think how many Thursdays we didn't leave until Otto's closed. Of course, I wish I could have tape recorded those conversations. I'm pretty sure that we solved all of education's challenges on those evenings; I just don't remember now what we said! I must have been a mental zombie on Friday. I know I couldn't do that schedule today.

Teachers' bodies adapt to their schedule. Many people have shared with me how the teaching day has impacted them physically. At FMHS, many teachers are hungry for lunch at 10:45, which, outside of our buildings is not lunch time. I know teachers who claim that if they are going to get the flu or a cold, the symptoms start on a Friday or right before a break. It's like their bodies know they have to hold it together until they have a day off. Others report that their bladders are exquisitely timed to the bell schedule.

I know that my emotional, physical and mental reserves always run out just as we reach a vacation. Is my system inventorying my resources, and then parceling them out in exactly the right amounts to keep me upright until there is recovery time?

It's a strange phenomenon.