Wannaskan Almanac for Tuesday, February 24, 2026 Ate Too Won

I have started a new morning ritual. Before I drink my coffee, before I check the weather, and certainly before I steel myself to enter the petri dish of hormones known as a middle school hallway, I look at a number. Today, that number is 821. That is exactly how many days stand between me and retirement. It sounds like a huge number, I know. But even when you measure time in 6th-grade class periods—which operate on a strange, agonizingly slow relativity scale—821 days feels like a manageable prison sentence. I am currently serving my time on the front lines of puberty, and let me tell you, the troops are restless, highly emotional, and smell vaguely of cheap body spray.

What the students think they look like

The core issue, and the source of my bone-deep exhaustion, is biological. I spend my days trying to inject knowledge into brains whose prefrontal cortices are currently marked "Under Construction." As any neurologist (or parent of a twelve-year-old) knows, this is the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and realizing that glue sticks are not a food group. My students are wonderful human beings in training, but right now, their rational thought processes are firing on about 2 of a possible 8 cylinders. I am essentially acting as an external hard drive for 280 developing minds, constantly reminding them that yes, pants are required to be up over your butt today, and no, shouting "skibidi toilet" is not an appropriate answer to any question ever in my classes.

This daily psychological warfare has a cumulative effect. I have developed a persistent, low-level crabbiness that sits on my shoulder like a grumpy parrot. It’s the result of thousands of tiny paper cuts on my patience—the fiftieth time a student asks to go to the nurse for a "sore throat" during a test, or the blank stares I get when I ask them to retrieve a pencil. My biggest fear is that this accumulated crustiness will become permanent. I am terrified that the "Teacher Look" I’ve perfected—the one that can stop a spitball at twenty paces—will become my default resting face in my golden years. I don't want to be the retiree shouting at squirrels because they aren't walking in a straight line.

The floor pencil...an irretrievable anomaly of every middle school

The dream that keeps me going is the vision of Day 822. In this beautiful vision, the loudest noise is the gentle whir of a fishing reel casting into a quiet lake. I dream of traveling to places where the local language isn't composed entirely of TikTok slang. Most of all, I crave sustained adult conversation. I want to discuss politics, literature, or even just the weather with another fully formed human without being interrupted by someone frantically waving their hand to ask how old I am feeling today.

So, the great countdown continues. I will tape a smile to my face, take a deep breath, and explain for the hundredth time why we don't lick our chromebook screen. It’s a marathon through mud, but I can see the finish line. Only 821 more wake-ups until I hang up my whiteboard markers forever and reclaim my sanity. Wish me luck; I'm going in.