i can stay up late now = a post.

okay. i'm starting from the beginning.

i started my internship freaking out. and i ended it pretty much the same way. at first things were good. i was back at winthrop which i enjoyed. i was paired with what i had heard to be an amazing mentor teacher. i loved my new roommates. i was at least somewhat confident in my abilities and my training.

around the end of october - halloween to be exact - i had a nervous breakdown. i had been scared for a long time. fearful of being in front of the students. of not being prepared. of not being liked (haha). i actually dreaded getting up in the morning. not because of the early morning hours. but because i hated it. all of it. and surprisingly it wasnt because i had a crappy mentor teacher. or because i was stuck with really bad classes with really disrespectful students. i actually an amazing, supportive, encouraging mentor teacher. and compared to what i have experienced this spring, the students were great. it was me. a completely mental thing in which i was so extremely hard on myself that i actually believed that the students hated me. that i was making nothing but mistakes. that there was no way in hell that i could be a teacher, let alone a good one.

on october 31st i went to school. and from the moment i got there i could not stop crying. my mentor teacher convinced me to leave. to rest and take my mind off things. the biggest part that i remember from that day is that i called my mom later on in the afternoon, crying of course, trying to explain to her how i was feeling and realizing that i sounded crazy but knowing that those doubts and insecurities were rooted deep and wouldnt be taken away easily. i felt trapped in a profession that i had spent 4 years studying how to do and that i now hated. talk about nervous breakdown. i know. i had one.