Easily Excitable

What a week it’s been. 

If you have any relationship to a school system, how’re you holding up?

On a scale of 1-10, how exhausted are you, and why is it a 57?

Thursday night, I konked out into the loveliest, most dreamless sleep. Friday morning came, and I could’ve used about five more hours. 

But, alas, the kiddos needed corralling. So, off to school I went.

There’s a saying we’ve all heard before. It goes a little something like this: 

If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. 

Honestly?

I think that’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t be this tired (from having so much fun) if this isn’t work. 

Not working has never been presented as an option to me. 

My parents were bound and determined that we Meadows children wouldn’t grow up to be lazy. They accomplished their goal. 

They started their work early.

It kicked off with chore lists Momma would leave while she went to pre-planning for the school year. 

(It should be said that I don’t think she was pre-planning in June. I think she was just  trying to escape us. I don’t blame her.)

There were also the numerous times Daddy tried to teach us how to wash cars, starting with the family vehicles. 

There were many bubbles floating down the drive on Berkley Road, but needless to say, our parents always drove streaky vehicles because of their spawn. 

Carwashing turned into raking leaves (and having sibling fistfights) on the farm. 

That turned into selling concessions at auctions.

From there, my part-time Employment took me to quite a few locales, such as… 

• Piggly Wiggly
• Citizens Bank 
• Monograms and More
• Chick-fil-A
• Macon-Bibb County City Hall
• J.C. Grant Company

And now, obviously, my main career is teaching. 

I remember when I was trying to decide what the next step was: I hear a lot of the, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” from quite a few well-intentioned people.

Maybe many of us are told that, and as a result, we buy into the fact that there is some golden egg career out there where everything will be Sunshine and rainbows and it won’t, for a single day, strain you like gainful employment. 

I wonder, too, if that’s why a lot of folks in my generation career-hop. 

That’s not a bad thing- it’s really not.

We all want to do something we love, and when we decide what we’ll (ideally) do for the rest of our lives, we’re just a little young.

The term “undeveloped frontal lobe” comes to mind here.

It’s seldom for someone to start at and retire from the same place. Not a bad thing- just interesting.

I think liking our careers matters more to us now than it probably did to previous generations.

I say all this to say that work, even when you love it, is, at the end of the day, just that: 

Work. 

You know my story: I won’t go to great lengths to tell it over and over again. 

Here’s the short, sweet, to-the-point version: 

I started teaching. I hated teaching. I looked to leave teaching. I started to like teaching. I stopped looking to leave teaching. I love teaching. 

God really watched out for this then-Meadows idiot.

It’s not a stretch at all to say I had no clue what I was getting into. 

Twenty-two-year-old me couldn’t hold a thought for more than five minutes, and five minutes might be a little too gracious. 

I didn’t know what I wanted at 22, so I didn’t know what even to pray for when it came to a job. 

How blessed am I that I got what my heart wanted: the ability to laugh daily, work on my stand-up comedian routine to a captive audience, hang out with people I love, and move around nonstop. 

I do feel like teaching is my purpose and what I’ve been gifted with. I know in my soul I’m in the right career, in the right place.

I know this, but even with that knowledge?

I still think the whole idea of “You’ll never work a day in your life” doesn’t compute. 

It just can’t. I love my career, but still?

• My legs are tired from walking around all day.  
• I doze off on the couch at 6:00 in the evening. 
• The early morning wake-up is harder and harder by the time Friday rolls around. 
• I am so mentally scattered by the end of the day that I’m nearly incoherent. 
• I sometimes have to wonder if I’m really smart enough to teach the intricacies and inconsistencies of grammar.
• I corral over 100 teenagers a day and experience all the funnies and frustrations that come along with that territory. 

It’s work. And the crazy thing is? 

It feels like work!

It’s mentally, physically, and spiritually draining. 

But what purpose this work gives me. 

It is work. It is hard work. But it is good work. 

I think that there is such value in teaching (probably not always in how I do it, what with my classroom antics). 

But I think about the men and women who taught me: they valued their classrooms and the kids in it. They were passionate about what they did and gifted in how they did it. 

They inspired me to be like them. 

What God blessed me with was good, meaningful work, and he placed me in classrooms with teachers who excelled at that good, meaningful work. 

My goal? It’s that my work will hopefully help get my students to their own version of good, meaningful work.

And that’s something that keeps me chugging along on those particularly hard days. 

Mainly, I just hope those kids are gainfully employed. But what a great thing if they could love their jobs, too. 

I always try to hype myself up at the beginning of a school year. 

It can be a long row to hoe, and there’s a lot of negativity to go around in education, both inside and outside the system. 

I get it: there can be a lot to be negative about. 

I’ve heard more than enough podcasters and pundits point out the woes of public education, as well as the need to totally trash it.

I don’t look at it through rose-colored glasses: I know there are issues in the system. 

My thoughts on public education would be a post unto itself, but I believe everyone should do what’s best for his or her kids.

Send your kids where you want. Keep them at the house and homeschool them, if that’s what you want. 

But my belief that I personally work for daily is this: 

I believe that no child should have to pay for a great education. 

I believe that should be free. 

I don’t think that finances should be a barrier to something that is so foundational for later success. 

A great starting point should be free. 

Lord knows, these kids have different starting places: I just want them to leave my classroom a little bit closer to the finish line. 

And with that in my mind and in my heart, I’m two weeks (AND ONE DAY) into this 2025-2026 school year. 

Do I love it? Yes. 

Is it still work? For sure. 

But is it good work worth doing? Absolutely. 

And thank God I get to do it!