There are two days of school left (with kids) and I could not be more excited! I have had a tumultuously wonderful first year of teaching, but I am very much looking forward to my first summer as a teacher. I will still be teaching thirteen days this summer (some for four hours, some for twelve) but that means I will have about fifty-nine yes, I counted days of paid freedom. I found a quote that I absolutely love stating that teachers on summer break aren’t on vacation, but they are just collecting their overtime. That couldn’t be absolutely more true. Next year I am going to start tracking every minute that I spend working on/in my classroom, grading, rehearsing, working with our show choir on weekends, etc. I can almost guarantee that I spend more time working during the school year than most people do working year-round jobs (that they get paid a lot more to do). HOWEVER, this is not a blog post to whine about my job, it is to celebrate my time off! Now, I shall continue this post in list form to commemorate all of the things I will want to do this summer. I will cross them off as I go through them in the next few weeks.

1. Celebrate my 23rd birthday, which is ironically the day after my last day of work
2. Read Me Before You
3. See the movie
4. Babysit my goddaughter for a week
5. Go camping
6. Visit Brookville Lake
7. Go on a Segway tour of Cincy
8. Visit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
9. Go to Kings Island at least three times
10. Visit the Cincinnati Museum Center
11. Run the Color Run in August
12. Blog more often
13. Go on a weekend trip somewhere outside of Ohio
14. Attend a concert
15. Binge watch a pointless show on Hulu or Netflix
16. Do something nice for someone else
17. Take an entire Monday through Sunday week without thinking about work

I think the only one that will be a true struggle to complete will be number fifteen. It is very hard for me to go even a few hours without thinking about a song idea, an activity or a list I could make to better prepare myself for the next school day, week or year. I think trying to complete this item off of my list will be hard, but very necessary for my mental well-being. Wish me luck!