Before the Big Day

** Fyi, This did not happen recently, but at the start of my teaching experience about two years ago**

When I woke up, something gnawed at the back of my stomach. I don't usually wake up feeling sick, so I tried to think what could have caused the mild sensation of nausea that greeted me that Sunday morning.

"Oh, yeah," I thought, "school starts tomorrow."

I hadn't really forgotten. After all, this was the big day, the first of many shovel-fulls of knowledge that I would pour into the achievement gap. I had been trained to relish this first day and to let my zeal for learning bubble over into the classroom, to bring the passion.

But as I stood up, noticing the heat in my room was already stifling, a different sensation hit me. While I recognized this new feeling, I certainly wasn't happy about it.

I hadn't had a panic attack in years, not since I had to hide from a snoopy landlord who didn't approve of unmarried couples cohabiting. Dizziness had snuck up on me, and, without my realizing it, I had spent five hours under a blanket, hyperventilating.

In the abstract, I was extremely excited about the first day of school. But now, with the actual staring me down, I felt a numbness behind my eyes, and as I walked down the carpeted stairs thick with dust--who had time to clean when the fate of 150 kids was on the line?-- the old feeling of numbness spread from my eyes, down my throat to my torso, where it met the nausea. I ran to the bathroom.

When I left the restroom, I went to the kitchen to make some oatmeal. I looked at the clock on the microwave: 11:30. I had slept exactly 5 hours more than I had wanted to. The plan was to wake up at 6:30, do some kind of exercise, and make copies of my day one forms and activities. According to the plan, I'd be done by noon and ready to relax and get to bed early.

The plan was off. Never mind the fact that I overslept and got sick and was filled with dread; I had a much bigger problem: I had no activities for the first day. No forms for the kids to take to mom and dad. No lesson plans. There were less than 24 hours before the first day of class, and I had nothing.