It's just business.

Tuesday, I'll be involved in a very serious business transaction.  A decision will be made by an authoritative figure about me and my role in the "company," based on what's best for business.

If, say, you have robots that are all part of an assembly line, and one robot breaks, you remove it and put in a new robot. There is no need to repair the other one, you've got a lineup of working machines, ready to do the assembly line work.

And I've been undergoing repairs.  I have been sick -- Sick from allergies that have been so severe I developed asthma and I required a functioning endoscopic sinus surgery, to do some fixing.  Ah, but the human body isn't so simple.  Can't just put in new parts and it's good as new...  Especially if the factory is causing this robot's shorting out. It's like if that robot was working in the very spot where there happened to be a leak in the roof, and the constant, seemingly unnoticeable, drip, drip of water corroded the parts and actually made it malfunction.  And they figured that out, luckily, but that robot was toast.  Because water and electronic devices don't mix; and me and mold? We aren't compadres.  They can put in a waterproof robot, (don't bother fixing the roof, because that sounds really darn expensive), and the problem is solved.  Easy.

So I'm being pulled off the assembly line that is now what we call public education.  But, honestly,  I could never function properly on that assembly line anyway, dripping water, or not.  I would keep shorting out.   Because I would keep picking up and admiring the "product," when I was just supposed to tighten the bolts as quickly as possible and let it keep moving down the conveyer belt.  I couldn't.  I'd see every single creation coming down the line, and I would want to know it, and help it, and worry about it, and applaud it, and encourage it to keep going...  And honestly, I might even kind of push it gently off the conveyer belt, hoping it would be able to think for itself, tighten its own bolts even!  I would want it to be an individual, in the mass of products coming down the line, faster and faster, "Move the belt faster!"

And if I did that with every little thing I was helping "build," I'd not only slow up the production, I'd stop it in its tracks.  Screech!  "What the Hell's going on in here?" 

And some machines, doing their work, as they were programmed to do along that line, wouldn't even fucking notice that nothing's-a-coming down the moving belt, and they would keep spraying the same color paint, adding pieces that don't connect to anything because the body of the substantial part of the product is not there.  Those robots would just keep moving as the switch in the factory that turns them on and off requires.  And me--that "shorted out, mess of a teacher" who keeps getting sick, and hasn't been able to stay for more than one semester for the last two years because I'm not waterproof--would never be the right robot for that job.  And I would never see my students as products.  Children amazed me with their uniqueness and vim.  I got to know each one as an individual.  

What a blessing that was, to have that opportunity.  And I would never, for even a moment, want anything different, than to see each student, and each day I spent with him or her, as something special and full of potential.