Maybe it’s just that we have to work or maybe it’s just the speeches. Either way, all the foreign staff at the school where I work felt like yesterday was Friday and that today was a mistake.

I’ve written before about how I need to beware the ides of October, but this year things seem to have started early.

One of the things that happens at the school where I work is that we spend the first month of our autumn term junior high school classes chasing down speeches and speakers and reading speeches and then listening to speeches. This burns a lot of energy, especially if we sacrifice a lunch break to hear a speech. We also spend a lot of time talking about missing speeches with  homeroom teachers who do a good job of blending “Oh, that’s terrible” with “Why is this my problem?”

There are sports days and sports tournaments and the approach of the two day school festival when the all boys school gussies itself up and tries, in general, to impress visiting young women and their parents.

Little things like “school” and “schoolwork” and “grades” aren’t that important in October.

For us, because of quirks of scheduling and a couple train delays, we hadn’t had a full week of work until last week. Then, for most of us, this week was a full week and everyone was dragging and trying to remember what day it was. Everyone agreed that getting up to go to work today was surprisingly depressing.

In my case I worked last Sunday, which means I’ve worked six days in a row. It also means I stopped caring about day four. I only lost my temper once and had to get loud twice. I also threatened a memorized conversation to get  class’s attention. This could be that start of the October doldrums.

I do have a couple projects in mind for the rest of October to keep me distracted and am even considering starting National Novel Writing Month early (sort of) to take advantage of some days off so that I can stop before exam time in November and still accomplish 30 days of writing. (More on that in another post.)

Until then, it’s a three day weekend followed by an exam shortened week.

I’m working on Sunday again, though, which kind of messes things up.