Teacher Diaries: Stress

I don't accept late papers.

I know that I'm a good teacher and I love what I do but sometimes, i find myself in a dark place and I just don't care. Parang ngayon. I arrived 25 minutes late to a class i haven't attended for two consecutive meetings. I know. I know. Bad. And it's not as if they are bad kids(i feel so old). They are actually doing okay and continuously improving... that is after i failed most of them in their prelims. Haha. 

The problem is that I feel that teachers are under appreciated by the admin. We don't have faculty room. We need to pay for our parking spaces on a daily basis. We have to do extra work for our superiors that are not part of our job description. We have to deal with colleagues who have bigger egos than their actual intellect. Frustrating. So why come to work? "Sir pasok na kayo. Namimiss na namin lectures(pagpapahirap) niyo." Haha. Certainly we don't get appreciation from our superiors but when appreciation comes from your students, albeit some are messages of sipsip proportions, you get up and go to work. I know I'm new to this and my experiences so far are nothing to what other teachers have had to deal with but at this point, I now have a minute understanding why teachers always complain about how they are treated... and why despite of that, we choose to stay.