I went to grad school. I made a B in a class and had to retake it. Made an A, but a B on the final paper. So they told me I might want to look into another field, look at different jobs, take the non-thesis option.

I know right? It was less traumatic than student teaching.

I'm done with music. I'm tired of these impossible standards. I don't know what I want to do. I thought about going into art, but I really need a job. I'm afraid to be an art teacher. I still want to help people, I think I want to be a social worker. I also want to lie in the grass and watch the clouds go by.

I haven't been on here in a while. I was kicked out of student teaching. I've never done teaching stuff before and if you don't know what you're doing, you're out of luck. I wasn't perfect, my cooperating teacher wasn't really the best. It's hard to explain.

I spent six years of college working for a major I really really suck at. And no one told me. I have a 3.9 G.P.A and I'm not good enough to be a music teacher. Alright.

After that it's hard to be certain about what to have for lunch let alone what you're going to do to make money to eat. I want to quit school so I have the availability to work full time for Kohls. But I wouldn't be happy. I'm going to go into musicology/music history. yeah, one of the obscure weird majors. I'll teach at a university, where you don't have to teach well to have a job. If students don't pass a test after you told the all the answers, you can actually fail them. It still scares me. Everything scares me. I almost had my self esteem built up and it shattered.


I really don't want to do anything. I don't know if that's depression. I don't want to go places, do things, be with people. I don't want to paint or draw or play. I don't want to go to school or work, just sleep. I see my doctor monday. I'm not leaving until I'm off wellbuturin. I hate it so so very much. I've had unbearable headaches since August. I started taking iron and drinking more water so I don't get them every day. A giant bottle of ibprofin lasted my family years. I've gone through at three medium bottles in 6 months. What good is being mentally ok if I'm bed ridden by the worst headache ever?

I want to quit student teaching because I feel like my cooperating teacher hates me. My University supervisor would have fired me already. I feel pretty hopeless. I said something about my teacher at lunch, and that's something you can get fired for. There's a bunch of stupid crap in there. I ask questions, I try new things, but it always seems to be an apathetic response or a failure. I want to quit. My teacher reminds me of my mom. Things are beyond repair. All the solutions I come up with...mean nothing.

They tell me my grades do not matter, my lack of experience is obvious, my inability to quickly improve is harmful. The holes in my education are my own fault, I am stupid not to know. I am ill, I am wrong. I am weak, I am wrong. I am weak.


I must be strong. I promised. I will find that student who smiles during the day, but cuts at night. I be the help someone needs, or send them to help. There are classes and books and websites for Autism, ADHD, reading problems, retardation, endless issues. There are teachers that fight for them, teachers that find them and help them move and find their own strengths. I'll read through piles of IEPs. Who will stand for bipolar and depression? They have a page in one book, in one class, that we didn't cover. My teachers tried so hard for me, but they didn't know. I wrote suicidal poetry in junior high, but who said anything to me? I screamed, hoping someone would hear and help and they never did. Not because they didn't want to, they didn't know. How could they? How can I leave someone out there? Band is where we go to find safety. Art, theater, debate, we congregate there. We don't stand out as much, our energy goes somewhere.

I believe that I must do something to change this world, even one person. I must matter, I must hold on to these old beliefs. I believe in God, I think He has a purpose for me. I'm not so sure what it is, but I will hold on to this.

I'm not sure if "I have bipolar" or if "I am bipolar."

If I have bipolar, then I have an illness. Which is true. I don't like the thought of it some days. I feel good, I feel like I can make it. Not the "I can do anything" mania feeling, but the "I can wake up and get stuff done, I'm not going to get fired, or start twenty projects I can't do" sort of I can do it.

Everyone says "I won't let bipolar define me," but if I am bipolar, then it's part of me. Surely my friends will all describe me in a way that shows my hypomania. I'm creative, inconsistent, hyper, I talk a lot. Sometimes I'm just weird. So much of hypomania is mixed in, there is no way to take it out. You don't describe your friends as diabetic or lactose-intolerant. I don't think of my husband as having cerebral palsy very often. Yeah, you see the limp, but there's so much more to him than that. It's shaped his personality. It's him, though.

Sometimes it just scares me. It's like eating Taco bell and wondering if you're going to have explosive diarrhea during work the next day. What happens when I have to miss three days of school because I can't stop crying? It's really silly to think about; I'm hardly ever sick. A mental health day wouldn't hurt. I don't know how my husband puts up with it; I don't know what I'll do when he's gone.

A happy post!
I started wellbutrin, 150 mg. I LOVE it. I shake a little, but it's not something that interferes. I wake up in the middle of the night or have trouble falling asleep, but I can stay awake all day. I no longer have debilitating fatigue. I was so terrified of student teaching, how could I do that while I needed a nap before school was out? I think I'll be ok.

Band camp started, and I love it. I love not marching, not learning a new show every two weeks, not having a dictator for a director. There's a boy with autism that's been working on a timpani part. It takes me a long time to learn and he learns by watching and imitating rather than reading. He thinks I'm hilarious. The kids work hard, they want to be there. I really don't expect people to like me, the way my mom treated me, the way classmates treated me. Kindness is a gift, not a given. They respect the teacher, so if she says to respect me, they do.

I want to be a teacher. In my darkest days, a few teachers knew that I was more than annoying, something was wrong. Bless their hearts, they didn't know what to do to really help, but they gave me hope. Give me the abused, the hungry, the lost, the outcast. I want to give them a safe place to be, where the outside world is gone for a while. Then give them music, a way to speak any emotion with no words, no fear of being rejected. Produce art with the deepest anger, the broken heart, the pure joy. At the end of the day they've achieved something, have pride in themselves. I know some will quit in high school, some in college, some, very few will never stop being a musician. Pride and hope never leave. I want to be the force that keeps someone holding on or the guide that gets them help. I want to be what teachers were for me, and what do what they didn't know how.

The other music teacher in the district put in a resignation, but it's pretty late to find a replacement...unless there was a student teacher graduating in December....hmmm.
There is a possibility, but I'm not putting to much into it right now, since a lot can happen in a few months. It'd be really nice to not make minimum wage and as a bonus not have to work black friday and tax free weekend. Football games and marching competitions are so much more fun.