I Hope That Saying About First Being Worst Isn't True...

I'm currently living on a college campus in New York to begin the training necessary for my new teaching career. I've been reliving the first few days of the Freshman year of college: meeting dozens of people whose names I forget almost instantly and forgetting what everyone looks like once they change clothes. I've probably asked "Where are you from?" and "What will you be teaching?" 1,000 times in the last 3 days. All these "polite" (read largely uninteresting) conversations are sucking the soul out of me. I haven't had to make friends in a long time, and I forgot how labor intenstive it is. I am so tired all the time, and I haven't even begun the hard part (teaching) yet.

On the brightside, I finally have a little bit of certainty. Though I've known for months where I will be teaching in the fall, I only found out today what I will be teaching: I am going to be a first grade teacher (!). I'm particularly excited about being a first grade teacher because it guarantees me immortality. About 20 years from now, my last name will probably serve as the answer to an online banking security question for one of my students. More importantly, I will live on in perpetuity in class photos, so that even when I'm old and bitter, my young and bitter self will exist in the memories of my students. Right now, at this late hour, this teaching assignment makes me happy because I can finally be able to tell all these other future teachers what grade I'm going to teach and manage to stretch these polite convos 10 seconds longer.