On Being 40(ish) by Lindsey Mead

Author:Lindsey Mead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

10

The Breathtaking Potential of the Attosecond

JESSICA LAHEY

Time may be the most commonly used noun in the English language, but for most of my career, it was a precious, fleeting, ever-waning resource. I am a teacher, one of those lucky souls who knew, from the moment I stood in front of my own classroom, that the die was cast. I was twenty-eight, and I could see an entire career stretched out in front of me.

For much of my first year as a high school English teacher, I struggled to stay twenty-four hours ahead of my students. I slept little, I ate as I worked, and I hardly saw my husband. I felt time’s scarcity at the close of every day. I was forever in need of a little more, just five minutes before the bell, a few extra classes before vacation starts. There was always one more thing to cover, thousands of facts to teach, skills to master, and competencies to meet during each school year, and never, ever enough time for it all.

Through my thirties and early forties, I continued to learn and grow as a teacher, and while the workload never diminished, I became more efficient. I learned to ignore the nitpicky, time-sucking details of the job and focus instead on the big picture: teaching middle school kids how to be curious, competent, and educated adults. Given that lofty mandate, the aesthetic perfection of my bulletin boards and my plans for elaborate, color-coded grading schemes just did not warrant any of those precious minutes in my day.

Time, after all, is a specious construct in education; the units that govern a teacher’s day are an administrative fabrication. A school “hour” measures only fifty minutes, mortared together between wasteful, messy layers of students settling in and shuffling out. A teacher’s day contains eight of these alleged hours, and, as we are constantly reminded by our grade books and school calendars, a presumptive year is really the span of 180 days, minus five to ten for mandatory state testing and three or four reserved for assemblies.

The meticulous planning of August always gives way to survival mode by November, and come June’s final reckoning, the math never, ever checked out. Things got lost. Important things.

I lost time with my students to talk, to commiserate. I lost the opportunity to express my sympathy over the death of Squeaky, Liesel’s beloved guinea pig. I lost lunch with Kevin, who just might be sliding into depression. I lost evening phone calls to touch base with parents who need to hear something—anything—positive about their kid.

I mourned these losses, of course, but educational exigence trumped emotional exorbitance.

And then, in my late forties, I began teaching in an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents. That’s when a writer named Alan Burdick and a student I’ll call Alexa taught me a little something about how time really works.

I read Burdick’s book Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation while on the road at a teaching conference. Thanks to Burdick, I discovered time can accommodate more than I figured.

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