Second verse, same as the first?

Perhaps it explains something about me that I can only count three years of my life--my post-kindergarten life, anyway--in which I have not been some kind of teacher or student. That's enough education to permanently ruin a person from operating in the real world. For one thing, I expect to forever run on a school year calendar, regardless of my position in life. In my mind, January's not truly the beginning of anything; it's halftime, though generally with fewer scantily clad women than the football version.

New calendars will never say New Year to me as much as piles of new school supplies do. I'll haul a fresh set of notebooks and pencils to school tomorrow to share with the deprived and the disorganized, but it won't feel the same. The path for the year has already been set; we're merely starting the downhill slide to spring and then the soft landing of summer. Oh, I hope there will be some changes, both for certain students and for me, but the weeks pass so quickly that it's hard to believe that some things will happen if they haven't yet. How will there be time?

I understand that's not a very January attitude, to admit that Dubya's not the only one who has a hard time charting a new course. But at least it's inertia and not dangerous bullheadedness! Who am I to flout the laws of physics? Well, um, nobody, since that's just a tired analogy and not a scientific fact. And I admit that I have heard change is possible; eight million Weight Watchers commercials have announced it in just the last week alone. Of course, if that were true, or at least easy, they'd have been out of business long ago. But good grief-- lump myself in with that president? I think I feel a new year coming on.