2+2=5

As of today I'm officially back to my daily drudgery for bread. (Otherwise known as "work.") But since I honestly do love my job, I suppose I'm mostly joking when I call it drudgery.

Mostly.

Although I feel like I'm far too young to say this, recently I can't help but wish that I could just shrug off all the politic administrative gobbeldigook and just be left alone to TEACH. And what really frustrates me is that I know I'm not supposed to be thinking these things on the first day. When I started teaching eight years back, the first day felt like a celebration. Sure, I was so young, so new, and so thrilled to have landed myself a job that I suppose I may have been viewing it all through rose-colored glasses, but even still - things just felt different. What used to feel positive and festive has somehow morphed into a pessimistic warning of some proverbial rain cloud lurking just over the horizon (aka: China). And although this year's opening day was no where near as negative as the previous two years' have been, it did take an odd turn for the Orwellian.

Observe:

• My district is now calling itself a AAA district, which sounds pretty great, except I'm fairly certain that there's no such thing as a AAA district. I'm preeeetty sure we made it up. But we're AAA now. That's like an "A," but times three. Impressed?

• My job title has been changed from "teacher" to "learning specialist." On the upside, they've assured me this new title is way fancier, thus greatly superior to my previous one. On the downside, it doesn't appear to come with a raise. I know. I looked.

And the kicker:

• Our district no longer has "problems." Instead, we now have "probletunities," which are sort of like opportunities, but worse. I think.

So basically, our problems, er, "probletunities" were all linguistically based. We've changed the words, thus changed our realities. I'm no longer a teacher in a pretty nice district who occasionally faces problems. Instead, I'm now a learning specialist in a AAA district who gleefully embraces her probletunities!

And isn't that nice? I love Big Brother...