The Faculty Lounge

by Jennifer Mathieu

She couldn’t quite explain it, not even to herself, but in her gut she knew that this was what she was supposed to be doing with her life.

Her desk and bulletin board were filled with sweet little thank-you notes dotted with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes that rhapsodized about what a wonderful English teacher she was.

“I think I might suck at it, too,” said Ms. Sanderson, trying to cheer him up. “But I also think I like it? Which makes for a difficult situation.

“Holden Caulfield may have suffered from, like, postwar angst and Waspy ennui, but at least there weren’t school shooters at Pencey Prep.”

A person could color-code and list and organize, but in the end, life sometimes just happened to you.

“Oh God, not markers and chart paper,”

“I know I want to die right now,” said Ms. Brennan to Mr. Williams. “Write that down.”

Oh, I got into teaching for the money and the fame.

The English teachers grinned in response and headed to the bar,

That she would have worked anywhere else but in a school had never been a consideration for her.

“No one is ever really ready for the first day,” she said. “So the best you can do is show up and hang on.”