The New Year

   In 51 hours, I will be standing in front of a new class of freshmen music majors, starting my third year of teaching.

   In a week, I'll be doing the same for my very own preschool advisory class. The familiar faces of my old high school/ grade school students will greet me as I walk down the hallway, only they will be much much taller after only two months of summer! And I will be shocked at how some of them will have to peer down to speak to me.

   Ask any teacher, and they'll tell you that for them, the New Year starts not in January, but in June. There is that powerful sense of expectation, of rebirth, of regeneration... and it comes not with the fireworks and half-devoured quezo de bolas, but with the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, the crackling sound of brand new notebooks and textbooks, the echo of students' laughter in the hallway. For the UP College of Music, it starts with the strains of Westlife, The Corrs and Alicia Keys heard in the corridor, outside the classrooms where students congregate, jamming to non-classical music while waiting for their professor to meet them for the first time (the chance of which is something like 1 is to 4, haha!).

   I look back on the past two months of easier living, on the mornings where I had time to savor my cup of (decaf) coffee while listening to Mozart or Renaissance polyphonic music on YouTube, and am glad.

    In the 10 months to come, I shall say goodbye to one hour more of sleep, one more novel read during weekends... but shall have the ineffable joy of interacting with hearts and minds so different from my own, which shall become as dear as my own... and truly, no amount of R&R can compete with that.  :)

    Ah... the life of a Teacher. There is nothing quite like it!