Conferences, Year 2

Date Zero has been rescheduled for Saturday night. I really feel like a snob when I say this, but I am not sure about dating someone whose work schedule changes. Is that terribly snooty?
Yesterday was the Very Long Day of teaching, the first day of parent-teacher conferences. It happens twice a year. I hate it. I absolutely loathe it. There are not strong enough words to convey my feelings of animosity toward it. I can't think of another career where one is expected to 1) work a 12 hour day, twice a year, for free, or 2) open oneself up for scrutiny by people who have no idea about the daily workings of the job.
Yes, parents need to know how their kids are doing. But parents don't see conferences as an opportunity to find out how their children are doing. Nor do they respect me enough to just sit and listen and take my word for it about how their children are doing. Parents look at conferences as an opportunity to tell me what they think about how I am doing my job. I am a captive audience, for 20 minutes (if they are polite enough to stay within their time zone, and IF they show up on time, which is a big IF) and I find that they are less interested in how their child is coming along in their education than how they can most effectively use that 20 minutes to badger me about my discipline/make up work/testing policies.
Anyway, after today it will be over until the 3rd semester. Really, it's enough to make me think about quitting teaching every time I go through it. Maybe after I have been teaching a few more years, it won't bother me so much.

What do you mean your work schedule changed??

Date Zero cancelled. My books don't tell me anything about how to handle that.
My complete and utter exhaustion turned out to be a cold in the making. It's getting worse every day. Saturday there was a little tickle in my throat. Sunday I was nasally. (is that a word?) Yesterday it was a little cold. Today it's a big cold. UGH!! And I have playground duty this morning, and it's raining, just to top it all off.
By the way, my regular ed kids did fantastically well on their testing. My special ed kids did about what I expected. They don't test well.

Date Zero

When dating online, if one is following the rules, one doesn't waste time online. One wants to use the online service as merely a mechanism to meet live, real people. This is one of the (many) mistakes I made in my past attempts. If the man has not asked me out in 4 emails or less, Poof! he's gone. They call the first meeting "date zero" since it is the first meeting and can't be considered an actual date. So I have scheduled my first date zero. I am compelled to remind myself that I am doing things differently, and doing it in writing just firms it up for me!
Ways this date zero is different from all my past date zeros, which I didn't even know were date zeros:
1. I know it's a date zero.
2. He contacted me first, and he asked me for the meeting.
3. He is planning the meeting and paying for everything.
4. Date Zero won't even happen unless he calls to confirm.
5. I will leave his name, number, and every other scrap of information I know about him with my safe person.
6. I will tell my safe person what time I will be home, and that I will call her immediately upon my arrival, and if I don't, she is to call me.
7. The meeting will last no longer than 2 hours.
8.I will end the meeting, not him.
9. I will not talk to him between now and then other than to confirm.
So that's the plan. It's very, very different from before! And so much easier! All I have to do is show up and look cute!
I also signed up for speed dating next week. HA!! I get a kick out of it every time I think about it.
Meanwhile, it is the dreaded week of parent-teacher conferences. Oh, how I hate them. HATE them. We are doing student led conferences, where supposedly the kids do the talking and explain to their parents how they earned their grades. You would think this would make my job easier, but it doesn't.

Rules for Dating Online

So I bought a couple of books yesterday to educate myself about dating. Since what I have done in the past did not work, I need new behavior to replace the old behavior, and the only way I know of to get new behavior is to read about other people's successful behavior and then emulate it. Does that make sense? One of the books is called Stop Getting Dumped. It's hilarious and chock full of good stuff, like the reasons why I should NEVER ask a man on a date.
"I know this may be a hard one to swallow, but here it is: The truth is, any man, no matter how shy, will muster the courage if he truly wants to ask you for a date. If he's shy, it might take him a while, but it will happen eventually. If it doesn't, he doesn't really want to date you."
That makes sense to me. Especially in light of my past experience. Being the woman and being the aggressor does not work. It has failed me every single time. So that's one of the new things I am going to do.
The other book I bought is called The Rules for Online Dating and it's by the same women who wrote the original "Rules" for dating. Some of the stuff I am doing doesn't make sense to me, like cutting down my online profile to the bare minimum (they say it will keep me mysterious) and keeping my response emails to two or three light, breezy sentences. But, like I said before, this is new behavior so it's bound to feel uncomfortable at first.
Since I don't feel doomed to repeat my past mistakes anymore, I am actually excited about my decision to start dating again. I guess time will tell...

Rules for Dating

I am ready to start dating again. I have made this decision after a lot of thought and some work on myself and my attitudes about men. These are some things I have to do in order to be successful at dating:
1. Put my best self forward. I know what my best features are, and I need to make them work for me.
2. Put the past where it belongs - in the past. Be willing to give men the benefit of the doubt and stop projecting my past mistakes into the present company.
3. Allow room for imperfection. I am not perfect, and it's unfair to expect anyone else to be either.
I signed up for a speed dating event for single parents in my age range. We'll see how it goes. I'm pretty excited about it!

Title Goes Here

Yesterday I opened up my cell phone and a post-it note fell out of it. It was from my youngest daughter. It said, "I'm so fat I want to kill myself. Please will you ask the doctor for diet pills?"
I don't even know where to begin to freak out. The suicide threat? The fact she thinks pills are the answer? How about that she eats junk all day and then complains about her weight? Now, part of this has to be chalked up to her personality. She is a drama queen. Everything is an emergency with her. Also, it is not unusual for a teenager to ignore their part in things. However, I have tried to teach this child about personal responsibility since the day she was born. In the end, I decided the best thing to do was to sit down and have a talk with her.
Meanwhile, also yesterday I left work early to take my other daughter for a physical so that she can play volleyball. I had made an appointment with her regular pediatrician, but she didn't want to wait for that appointment. She wanted me to call this list of clinics and get a sooner appointment. So I did, and yesterday we were right on time for the appointment. We waited. And waited. And waited.
We were there for 2 hours and 45 minutes before we finally got the stupid paper filled out. I dropped her off at volleyball practice, and went straight home instead of going to work out. I was hungry, tired, and annoyed, so I skipped my workout. Great.
Meanwhile the younger daughter had a dance at school she wanted to go to, and her friend's mom came and picked her up, and she was already gone by the time I got home. I fell asleep before she got here because I'm still completely exhausted (maybe I had better get my thyroid checked again?) and the bottom line is that I did not so much as exchange words with her yesterday. This after she left a suicide threat in my cell phone.
I ate dinner when I got home and then an hour or so later I went to pick up the older daughter from practice. She is supposed to call when she's ready, and practice ends at 7:30, and it was 7:45, and she still hadn't called. So I drove over there. She was sitting on the curb, talking to a BOY WITH FACIAL HAIR. He is a senior I think... he has a car, and he came to watch the volleyball practice. And she didn't call me to come get her because she was talking to him.
She didn't get mad at me for coming to get her but she acted like I had caught her doing something wrong. She certainly didn't volunteer any information, but she answered my questions about why he was there and kept asking me what was wrong, and was I mad. I couldn't answer her because I didn't and still don't know why I am so heartbroken. Is it that she doesn't choose to share her life with me? Is it that she would rather sit on the curb than come home? Is it that she is slipping away from me, and will be gone for good in another two years? That's probably it.
I can feel my heart splitting in two.

Complete and utter exhaustion

Maybe I'm coming down with something. Maybe it's because the end of the quarter looms upon us and I'm ready for the 3 week break. Maybe it's aftereffects of only working out once last week. Probably it's the crappy food I've been eating. I'm so tired I just want to cry.
I have been really stressing about the testing coming up. I feel confident that I've been doing an OK job of teaching my special ed students. I can see their academic growth, and there is an even distribution of grades in my gradebook. I'm fearful, though, because I keep thinking that SE students don't typically test well, and what will happen if the scores come back and nobody has shown any progress? What if we haven't really accomplished anything, and it's all just been optimistic thinking on my part? Yikes. I remember doing this to myself last year with the regular ed kids I was teaching, and all that worrying was for nothing. I'll just have to keep the faith and quit obsessing. I'm so ridiculous sometimes.

Dear Bo Derek,

You have somehow convinced Congress that they need to spend time on this ridiculous parody of celebrity activistm. Let's just review:
"It's handwritten letters that still affect our representatives. Congressman [John] Spratt [D-S.C.] said it's the — what did he call it — the butterfinger letters. He said, "It's the letters you can see a housewife maybe sat down and had butter on her fingers, and there are smudges on a handwritten letter." And he said that those letters will still affect his vote more than anything, more than any lobbyist. "
First of all, you are in need of a serious and bracing reality check if you think any of those white males in congress are actually taking you seriously. When they look at you, what they see is you in your cornrows, breasts bobbing, jogging on the beach in "10." Or, they might see your latest "work," you in full makeup and tight clothes having a catfight with Morgan Fairchild. I can almost hear their thoughts: "Oh, look at the pretty celebrity. She wants us to talk about horses. Well, it won't hurt to humor her."
Can you imagine what you might have chosen to do with all of the time and money you have managed to squander with this "cause"? There are children, actual human beings, who do not have enough food to eat in this country. They don't have decent shoes to wear to school. Speaking of school, there are thousands of schools in our country, full of actual human beings who could benefit from just a fraction of the taxpayer money you are wasting on talking about horses. They don't have enough paper or pencils to go around, and they are using textbooks that were published 20 years ago. How many textbooks could have been bought with the taxpayer money Congress will waste when they begin their session, and spend taxpayer time and money on the floor talking about HORSES??
What's next after horses? Are you going to take on the beef industry? Pick up the clue phone, Bo... humans are mostly carnivores. They like to eat meat. You saw what happened to Oprah when she took on the cows, and you don't have anywhere near the starpower she has.
Is it too much to ask that you pick a real cause? It literally made me sick yesterday to see you being interviewed by George Stephanopolous (by the way, George, I doubt I will ever watch your show again) and getting all misty-eyed about people eating horses. We've got a war going on. Human beings right here in your country are losing their sons and daughters by the thousands. The Gulf Coast is still devastated; people there still don't have homes or jobs to go back to because they can't get any help from the government. And you choose to spend your time and money, and my taxpayer time and money, talking about horses? Why don't you go get a manicure or something, and stay the hell out of politics.

A Truly Defining Moment

I took on the job of teaching the 8th grade special ed math class. Now I am teaching math to all of the special ed students in the school, along with two classes of regular 7th grade math.
Teaching the SE kids is different from teaching the regular ed kids. Every day I learn new ways of relating to them and understand a little bit more what they need in order to be successful. Little things like making the first few math problems on the worksheet easy enough for everyone to do, so that they have some confidence as a group, are crucial. They have low expectations of themselves and they are quite accustomed to adults around them having low expectations as well. Their first few weeks with me are hellish. I force them to rethink their beliefs about themselves and others. I force them to use manners, be kind to each other, and write their name on their paper. In the regular world, these things are no big deal. But in my world, some of these kids have been treated for their entire lives as though they are not capable of writing their name on their paper, or being kind, or polite. They think I'm mean. They make fun of me behind my back and complain about me to anyone who will listen.
There are times when I doubt myself. I wonder if I am being too hard on them. My feelings get hurt when I hear them making fun of me. I wonder if I made the right life choice to be a teacher, and especially if I am cut out for teaching SE. Then there are times when I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to be doing. Last week in 8th grade we learned how to solve one-step equations with fractions in them. My greatest gift as a teacher seems to be that I can boil even the most complicated things down to a few simple steps. I taught them how do solve equations over the course of four days, and on the fifth I gave them problems to do on their own. One student in particular believes to his very core that he is worthless. He knows he is not allowed to talk about that in front of me, and I have made it very clear that I disagree with his view. On that fifth day of solving equations, I stood behind him while he solved an equation. (Ok, I might have talked him through a step or two.) He got to the end, and he had the right answer. I said, "Good job." He paused for a moment, and then gave me a shocked look.
"You mean that's IT??"
"That's it. You did great."
I began to walk away, and I heard him talking to himself in amazement. He said, "I am smart. I am smart. I got my dad's brain!" He proceeded to work hard, alone, for the rest of the period, solving equations and feeling VERY good about himself. That in and of itself is a small miracle.
There is no amount of money, no award or official recognition, no praise from any outside source that could measure up to those moments. It was a small victory for one child, but it made all the difference in the world to me. At least for today, I have no doubts at all!

Fat Pants

It took three months, but I have finally got a pair of pants that I will have to put away because they are too big. I wore them today and I knew when I put them on that I should change, but I didn't want to take the time. So I was hitching them up all day, how professional! I didn't care. It feels good to not fit into my fat pants. My weigh and measure day at Curves is the 30th, but I am ambivalent about seeing what the scale has to say. I would rather just go with what the fat pants say.

Dreams

I fought the sugar and the sugar won. Well, the sugar is winning right now. The good news is that even though I haven't been recording my food intake, and I haven't been making very healthy food choices, I have not let go of my exercise program. I still go faithfully to the gym 3 times a week and it feels really good. It isn't boring, and it goes by fast. There are other women there to talk to and every time I do it, I get to be really proud of myself for taking good care of me.
I have been having school dreams every night. Every. Single. Night. I think it might be a good idea to document the dreams. Not sure why I think that. I just do. In real life today, I am meeting a friend from college for lunch. Then I am driving the kids halfway to Phoenix to meet their father, who will take them for the weekend. Then, I will head to Globe, where I will meet my best girlfriend at a bed and breakfast for a sleepover. We planned this months ago. Meanwhile, I am watching my nephew while one of my sisters is in New York. You'll see how all these things come into play in my dream of last night.
Here is the dream, as best as I can remember it - they fade so quickly. I am in school as the teacher. (Sometimes I am the teacher, and other times I am the student.) It is the first week of school, the fourth day, so it is Thursday. I have been doing OK with the kids, getting them used to my routines and such - this is an 8th grade special ed class, about 17 kids. Today, the kids decide to challenge me. Instead of handling it like a professional, of course I am a complete ninny. Screaming and yelling, threatening with empty threats, etc. and the kids are loving it. It is near the end of the school day, and I just keep thinking, another hour. I can do this. Naturally the principal and other teachers are popping in and out, not helping, but taking note of the fact that I obviously can not handle my kids. Then suddenly I remember I am supposed to be taking a trip to New York with my best girlfriend! We are leaving tonight! I am supposed to meet her at the airport in a few hours! And I haven't got a sub for tomorrow, much less lesson plans! (Who gets a sub for the first week of school??!!) So I go to the phone and try to call HR so I can get a sub, and I have to chase 3 of my female students off the phone who were using it without my permission by the way, and then the phone doesn't work! And on the other line, the tech guy is all of a sudden there and telling me he is on his way to my classroom to remove the fiber from the phone line because it needs to be fixed! So I will be without phone and computer. Then I realize I have a computer, and I haven't even tried to use it. Somehow or another I find out that there are no subs available for tomorrow. Meanwhile I am supposed to be teaching this whole time. It is the middle of a social studies lesson, of all things. I'm a math teacher for gosh sake. So in between trying to get the kids to get textbooks and open them up, and get the kids that are hiding behind the kids in the back row, crouched next to the wall smoking cigarettes, I realize that I need to call my best girlfriend and tell her I can't make it. This is bad because I already know that she has paid for the plane tickets. I really don't want her to be mad at me. I keep trying to get her number to come up on my cell phone so I can call her, but I can't call her on my cell phone because the battery is dying. I keep trying to get the number to come up long enough for me to dial it on the classroom phone, which is only working part of the time, and the number keeps disappearing, and the principal keeps coming in, and my eyes are glued shut, and there is a dance after school that I promised to chaperone and forgot about, and I can't get ahold of my girlfriend to tell her I won't be meeting her at the airport.
Then, thank the Goddess, I woke up. This is happening every single night, I am not kidding. Maybe if I write them down they will stop. There is just no need for this kind of anxiety! I'm a good teacher! What the hell??!! Could the sugar and the dreams be connected?!

Who's counting

I overdid my workout yesterday. I only think that because I hurt whenever I move. One of the machines at Curves is definitely getting the better of me. I can do all of them, and most of them are nothing new. But this one, this horrible contraption designed to work the lower trunk, is just beastly. So of course I work harder on that one than any other, instead of taking it easy, and now I am paying for it.
The exercise is messing up my food. On the days I work out, I get hungry a couple of hours before lunchtime. So I eat a snack, and then I'm not hungry at lunchtime, and the whole day gets screwed up. I'm not sure what to do about that. Timing is important on this food plan I am doing.
Mentally, I am doing better than I have in a very long time. I feel stable and clear headed most of the time. I do not feel depressed, which is wonderful. Today I am going to my new classroom and working for a few hours. My goal is to have the lesson plans done for the entire year before school starts. They would be preliminary lesson plans, that I would adjust as needed, but it will be a good base to start with. That should make my workday shorter and allow time for other things, like working out and planning my food.

Day 4

Today is supposed to be the hardest as far as sugar withdrawal. Yesterday afternoon I was craving beer, wine, anything with sugar. I kept reminding myself that if I had any, I would be priming my brain to want more, and the cravings would be worse, and it would be worse for at least a day. Meanwhile the depression will not lift. I am going to work out today at Curves and maybe that will help.

Day 3 - Truth

I ate everything in sight yesterday that did not contain flour or sugar. I wanted ice cream so bad... I just kept putting myself off. I thought, in another hour, if I still want it, I'll have it. After doing that about three times, the craving finally passed. I don't know if the 16 oz ribeye steak had anything to do with it or not. heh.

Something I am changing about myself right now is the ability to keep meticulous records. I now have a food journal, here on my computer, where I log what and when I ate, and how I was feeling emotionally and physically when I ate it. The point of the journal is not to "get the goods" on myself so that I can start calling me names. I have to work hard to remember that! The point of the journal is recording data, like in a science experiment. I can't look for patterns if I don't have the data. I have tried many times to keep a food journal, but this time may be different... the past few days,when I have felt bad about what I ate, I reminded myself of the purpose of the journal. Then I wrote what I ate and that I felt bad about it. Rather than being something shameful, which I guess is what I was expecting, it has turned out to be liberating. Being honest about my food feels good. Yesterday, it helped me be honest about other things.

We abhor in others what we can't stand about ourselves.

Yesterday I was writing a "Dear John" email to a man I had been seeing. This man is an independent contractor; he works for himself, and he does I.T. When a server crashes, he has to go fix it, no matter the time or day. Saturday, after not hearing from this man for days, I got a call from him saying he was on his way to fix a server and if it went well he would call me when he was done. I had quite the moment of clarity. Seeing me was a matter of convenience. He has a son, so this way he had an excuse to drop his son at the home of a family member. Then, he thought, if he could get the work done quickly, he could come to my house and nobody would be the wiser. Here's the thing - I am wiser. I realized the meaning of what was happening - seeing me was not a good enough reason to get a sitter, but work was; nor am I worthy of spending time around the child. Not only that, he has to make excuses in order to find time for me.

I could have chosen to ignore what I was seeing and feeling, be complacent, and allow him to treat me like "the other woman." I did allow him to come over, and I waited for an explanation. (I can't change everything at once.) When none was forthcoming, I gently excused him from my presence. Then I waited for an explanation (I know, I know) for a few days. Still nothing... that's when I found myself writing the Dear Julio letter.

We teach others how to treat us. I have been working on who and what I am, through the process of finding out who and what I am NOT. I am not a convenience. I am not a booty call. I AM a Goddess. And every time I am honest, truly honest, with myself and those around me, I honor myself and others. Every time I make a step in the direction of honesty, it is a victory for my soul. When my soul wins, so do my children's souls, and my sister's souls, and my mother's soul. Because I cannot have a true relationship with anyone unless I am true to myself.

I am officially letting go of my old idea that "self knowledge" means taking responsibility for things that aren't mine and then beating myself up with them. My new idea is that "self knowledge" means telling myself the truth, and then loving the truth. Loving me for telling the truth. Looking at it straight in the eye and then rejoicing because I can have it.

Day 2

According to Potatoes Not Prozac, I need 88 grams of protein a day right now. That will go down as I lose weight. Yesterday I just divided by 3 and tried to eat the same amount of protein at brakfast, lunch, and dinner. I have never eaten so much protein at breakfast, and a few hours later I had a whopper of a headache! But I didn't get hungry. Today I think I will go a little less at breakfast and a little more at dinner, and see how that works.
Other things I am focused on right now:
Eat 3 meals a day, at 7, 12, and 6.
Eat a good amount of protein at every meal.
No sugar or white flour.
Work out every other day at Curves.
Eat a starch before bed.
The starch before bed is supposed to help my body make and absorb my own serotonin and beta endorphins, which will relieve my withdrawal from the Effexor. We'll see if it works. I feel pretty good mentally today, much better than yesterday morning. I don't want to look at short term results because they seem unimportant, but the bottom line is if there are no short term results, I won't have any reason to find out what the long term results are.

Ch-ch-changes

The winds of change are in the air! Today I am going to join a gym. This is not something I was willing to even consider until now. What has changed? Well, quite simply, I am desperate. I can't stand the way I look or feel. I have never felt so fat, which is logical since I've never been so fat either. I am trying to wean myself off of my anti-anxiety medication. Now don't freak everyone, I am under my doctor's supervision. My psychiatrist said that if I wanted to try it, the summer after my first year teaching would be the first time she would be OK with it. Here's the thing... the medication changes my brain chemistry in order to allow serotonin and endorphins to be absorbed. That's why it works. When I take less of it, my levels of serotonin and endorphins go down and I feel yucky. Other ways to raise those levels include eating sugar and exercising. Guess which one I have been doing? Yup. Inhaling Krispy Kremes like they're going out of style. I simply cannot seem to motivate myself to exercise. The winds of change (this time around) have come in the form of a book called Potatoes Not Prozac. I can identify with a great many of the things this author says, and she has backed up her statements with research. Her numbers get a little fuzzy when it comes to the percentage of her clients who have sustained long term recovery, but at this point even some short term recovery would do me a world of good, I think. She places a lot of focus on keeping a mentality of "one choice at a time," saying that even one day at a time is much too long term for this kind of problem. I really hope that if I work out, I will be able to resist eating sugar. If I don't start to do better, I will have to give up the idea of going off the medication. And I really don't want to give that idea up just yet.

Yesterday I thought that I would relax. No kids, no work, no lesson plans to do. Instead I was stir crazy all day. I talked to another teacher and he says it's the end of the year let down. Makes sense when I think about it... anytime one invests a lot of time and energy looking forward to something, when that something actually happens, there is no way it can measure up. Kind of like Christmas. So today I'm just going to clean the house.

hey hey hey, goodbye

Well, I have survived my first year of teaching. I'm still sane, and I am still upright. The biggest deal is that I plan on teaching again next year. Saying goodbye to my principal yesterday was the best part of my day, without a doubt. He scheduled a staff meeting, on the last day of work, and kept us for an HOUR. He has such an inflated sense of his own importance, he thinks whatever he has to say is great enough that the rest of us want to hear it too. So, we sat in groups and wrote a list on chart-size post it notes about the successes of the school year. Then we had to listen to him make a speech to each person who was leaving the school. Seven people are leaving, and five of them are from the 6th grade. What is wrong with this picture?? Anyway, I got to leave after the schmooze fest and I never have to go back there again.
Hooray!!

Good Choices

Yesterday two of my students were in trouble for something or other, and were called up to the office. During my plan, I saw them up there and asked what was happening. They were both honest with me and it turns out to be a pretty serious thing, especially for sixth graders. I patted their shoulders, went back to my room, and promptly sat down for a cry. I didn't cry because of anything having to do with me or my teaching. I cried because these kids are worth so much more that what they are choosing to do. I cried because I can see them making the wrong choices, going headlong down the wrong path, and because it's their choice and I have to let them make it.
Sometimes I think, wait! I can't be in charge here, I am hardly a good decision maker! I was making those choices not too long ago. Maybe that's why I have finally found my place in life. I made it through in one piece, in spite of all my bad decisions, and maybe I have something to say to these kids that will make a difference. I struggle every day to do the right things. The difference in the past few years is that the right thing has been winning. My life has changed. I have changed.
If I can figure out a way to warn these kids in a way they will understand, in a way that will make a difference, it will all have been worth it.

Open mouth, insert foot

I did something horrible today at work and I feel shitty about it. I was at a yet another math teacher meeting in an endless chain of them during which we decide nothing but pretend we're doing something important. We say meaningful things like "When you look at the data..." and "Using formatives for that purpose is..." and "Are there any more bagels?..."
A big shot from the district office was there, and we were talking about whether or not to change the sequence in which we teach math. Test scores came up, and one of the test scores that was being discussed was from a test my youngest daughter took a few weeks ago. I had looked at her results, and they were poor. Since she is normally one of the highest scorers, I asked her about the test. She said there were things on there that she didn't recognize from anywhere, and that had never been taught. Her math teacher was also at the meeting, by the way. Someone brought up that the reason for the low test scores might be that the items they used to teach those concepts must not have matched the test. So I piped up with my little tidbit of information, not realizing until later what a huge asshole I must have sounded like! She probably thought I was saying she was doing a crappy job. So I sent her an email apologizing, to which she has not responded. I wish I could keep my goddamn mouth shut.