Things I have learned:

1.  My students panic at the word essay, even when they have been writing essays for me for the past three years.  Why is that?  What about the word “essay” fills my students with such dread?  For real, I thought my juniors were going to start vomiting.  They couldn’t come up with thesis statements.  They couldn’t figure out how to restate the prompt.  Heck, they couldn’t even figure out what the poem was or who wrote it.
2. Urgency can’t be impressed enough, and apparently I still haven’t figured out how to explain it to my students.  I think I need clearer deadlines.  But I think they need clearer understanding of what it means to have a deadline.
3. When I get frustrated, I appear depressed.  Sometimes I get afraid that I’m going to lose my temper.  It’s not okay to lose my temper at my students.  I think it’s okay to show them that I’m frustrated or disappointed in their behavior, but actually losing my temper at them is not going to get myself anywhere.
4. When I wake up and I feel like I’m going to vomit, chances are that my sugar levels are high and it’s not that I don’t want to go to work.  Sometimes, however, it is hard to tell the difference.