I just finished my first real week of teacher-life.  I have had more emails and meetings this week than I had had in a whole semester at college.  I couldn't even keep up with the emails- as soon as I would read one and respond or do whatever it said, I'd get another. and that's not even counting all-staff emails. at least one every 5-10 minutes there.  I'm sure I'll get used to it but it's overwhelming right now.  I also didn't realize how many teams, committees, and departments are involved.  In my classes alone I'm automatically in two departments and a team, they haven't assigned committees yet.  I do love our team though - they seem like an awesome group.  

I found out I have to try and teach excel to freshmen in spanish so I'm going to have to actually open up the program and mess with it quite a bit before I attempt that. - at least I'll be learning too.  

I still don't have all the keys to my classrooms and my syllabi are still in rough draft form.  I'm sure it will all come together somehow.  As much as I wish we still had a week to prepare, I think it will be better to just dive in where we are and learn along the way.  I don't care what teacher help book you're reading, you can never be fully prepared for the first day.  I only have my freshmen for 6 minutes in each class monday - seems like a waste but it should help them find their way around the school and at least meet their teachers, and hopefully give me a bunch of time to finish all my last minute items!  

I'm still having trouble wrapping my brain around the theoretical side of teaching that you learn in college colliding with the actuality of the day-in-day-out reality of teaching.  I've met some incredible teachers though that give me hope that it can be done.