A "Bad" Day

August 27, 2013 is a day I will never forget. That was last Tuesday, more than three weeks into the year at my placement school in the heart of South Phoenix. But this is where my story begins. Our memories often lie along a spectrum, and we tend to classify them in our minds as "good" and "bad" or somewhere in the middle. However, for my most vivid memories, their place in the spectrum is unfixed. I think, perhaps, they defy classification because they transcend the arbitrary labels of "good" or "bad". On a basic level, August 27th was a "bad" day. I know this because if offered the chance to relive it, I would certainly decline. Nevertheless, I also believe that this day is one of the most important in my life. It also happens to be the reason I decided to start writing this journal.

That day began like most days for a first-year teacher: blanketed in fatigue. I've never liked waking up early. In college some of my worst days began with an early morning workout for baseball. My senior year, I strategically planned my schedule as to never wake up before mid-day (never mind you that most of the time I'd get woken up by someone mowing a lawn, edging the sidewalk, blowing leaves, etc.). Most weekdays I wake up at 5 A.M.; sometimes I treat myself and wait until there's the tiniest bit of light outside, which only adds up to 15 or 20 more minutes. On average, I'd say I usually sleep 6 or 7 hours on weeknights. This particular day, however, it was far less. I'm usually out the door 45 minutes after I wake up, and depending on whether I choose to feed my coffee addiction, I normally arrive at school between 6 and 6:15. I am either the third or fourth car in the parking lot, arriving slightly later than the janitor, the principal, and sometimes one of my TFA counterparts. One of the interesting things about Phoenix is that there are about five different ways to get any place you want to go in a reasonable amount of time. From my Tempe apartment to my South Phoenix school, I have four different routes I take. The fastest route is to take the freeway down to the southern edge of Tempe, then drive west along the southernmost major road on the Phoenix-proper grid. This takes you past some of the "landmarks" one might associate with the area--the most striking of which is a giant resort where my school district, despite severe budget cuts to other areas, hosted two days of professional development complete with three course meals and a free Starbucks coffee bar to get you through that afternoon slump. This route is the quickest, but it bores you to death. You drive so fast that the already dull view of apartment complexes and strip malls blends together into one dreary scenery, the only demarcation being the intersections that count--48th St., 40th St., 32nd St.,--moving closer to the geographic center of the city.

In the weeks leading up to the start of the school year, I took this route every day. There was no thought of anything different. Isn't fastest always best?  What I hadn't realized yet was that this road was also very unreliable. Most days went without issue, but occasionally there was an accident or some other incident that caused huge backups. What makes things worse is that once you've committed yourself to this route, it's very difficult to recalculate and go a different way. My worst experience was a day when there happened to be a road-rage shooting an hour or two before I left my apartment. I hadn't thought to check traffic reports, so I was met by a wall of traffic and road blocks, turning my 20 minute commute into an hour and a half. Perhaps in protest of this great injustice, rather than real necessity, I started to take a new route to work. Instead of going straight south down the freeway and then west all the way over, I hopped on a different freeway that dipped under the city center heading west. From there I exit and drive over the Salt River into South Phoenix. Although it costs a few extra minutes each day, I actually prefer this commute, which may come as a surprise to those who know me as a very rational-thinking, pragmatic individual. Have no fear; most days I still take the quickest route, but there is a certain aura to driving past Rio Salado Park and seeing the skyscrapers of downtown right before crossing into an area of Phoenix filled with so much history and culture. The juxtaposition of the developed downtown area against South Phoenix is not unlike that of most major cities in the United States. But it is striking, and after a few months here I still have yet to be desensitized to the emotions it brings me. Driving through the backstreets that surround my school, I am reminded of why I am here.

To be continued...