Still learning lessons from my students.

The other morning, about 5 minutes after I woke up, the phone rang. It was work wondering where I was. I said at home. They told me I was supposed to be at work. I said no I don't start until 7 tonight. They said that the schedule says I should be there now. Long story short, someone changed the schedule on my day off and never bothered to tell me.

Needless to say I was PISSED. I have never been late for work because I forgot I was working or hadn't checked the schedule. The only times I have been late in my life, and I can count them on 2 hands, it was because of forces beyond my control. The weather or traffic.

I am the kind of person that would rather be 30 minutes early than 1 minute late. It irks me when people are late and I try to NEVER be late. There are people at work who are habitually late and it screws up everyone who is working. To me being late is a sign of unreliability and I never want to be considered unreliable.

Needless to say I was working myself into a righteous fury on my way in. Not a good mood to be in when driving. Nor when working. Especially when you factor in that I am NOT a morning person on a good day and this was not starting off as a good day.

As I listened to myself rant I had an epiphany from my teaching days. I had just ranted to myself that "I am never late!" when I heard a little voice in my head start laughing at me.

Then I remembered how upset some students got because they didn't get a perfect score on a test. One student actually cried because she got 99 out of 100. Shen went on and on about how she never failed. She never got less than 100. At the time I thought she was just being stupid. Now I can understand it better.

"I am never late!" "I never get less than 100!" They are actually pretty stupid things to get worked up over. Whether it is anger or sorrow. Of course we are late at times in our life, whether our fault or not. In my case it wasn't my fault. It happens. Just like getting 99 instead of 100 isn't the end of the world.

Even in my state of pissed offedness I could see how much I was over reacting. It helped calm me down and get me looking at things from a more reasonable perspective. It also helped me understand, in retrospect, some of the stress my students were going through and why they reacted the way they did.

I always said that my students taught me things. Even over a year after teaching I can still learn from them.