Ms. Vazquez returns

It was a sad day when Ms. Vazquez announced that she was leaving for Puerto Rico and would cease to be our AP European History teacher. The day she left was particularly emotional, especially because she had personally assembled almost the entire class from some of her favorite students. So it was sort of a surprise to hear that she would be coming back in April. And it turns out that this week was the week she would come.

Today in AP Euro, some people had discovered somehow that Ms. Vazquez herself had come to visit and was in the library. Shortly thereafter, a few of her favorites (including myself) were called down to see her. She commented as adults do about how different we all looked, but it was she who had changed the most. She had dyed her hair blonde and was wearing makeup. Upon chatting with her, I discovered that she was actually happy living in Puerto Rico -- much more so than she had ever been here. But she was definitely still her intelligent, boisterous, caring self. We filled her in on what had been going on in the class: students who had dropped out, drama between the girls (that I didn't even know existed), what we were studying now, and the like. I also mentioned the Boys State interview incident. At this point, Kristen and Brian had gone back up to class to bring down Kelsey and Luke, respectively. Ms. Vazquez likes them too.

The question of colleges inevitably came up in our discussion, of course. Everyone discussed how they were going to spend the rest of their lives. When Ms. Vazquez asked me, I gave her my one true answer: I don't know what career I want, and I don't know what college I want to go to. I can imagine that she was probably a little disappointed somehow at my indecision. Everyone else, it seems, has dreams. Oh well. She did, however, offer to write me a letter of recommendation, so she told me to give her my resume tomorrow. So I had to write My First Resume™. (It's true that I attempted to write a resume for my Boys State application, but it's a good thing I didn't waste my time finishing it.) It's a pretty pitiful resume: no objective, no career goals, only one job ever, a couple of school awards here and there. It looks very blank and sad.

Ms. Vazquez had really invited us down to the library to talk about some essays we had written. Back when she was our teacher, she had asked this small group of students with good writing skills to write some essays about some things that she or someone else would need in order to send to someone to determine some thing. But the only real reason, it seems, is that she had come back was to check out the globe that some of her classes raised funds to buy last year. It's a large globe that turns and I think lights up and stuff, and it was to be installed in the library. Today when we met Ms. Vazquez in the library, lo and behold, it was there -- although the lights hadn't been connected yet, apparently. Tomorrow, I believe, she will be there for the globe's dedication, and so her goal of leaving her (and her classes') mark on the school will be complete.

This isn't really related to the above, but I have a splitting headache. Why, you ask? Yesterday and today I've had a substitute teacher in precalculus class. When there's a sub, Mr. Gates just has us read and work on the next lesson. I did fine with that yesterday. But today, when I had to figure out the number of times a certain number occurred on the graph of a particular period of a trigonometric function, my brain practically exploded, and my head's been bothering me since. In short: I was thinking too hard. The lesson here, kids, is not to think so much.

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