The Oscar for Best Actress of IS3 Goes to: Lauren Daily!

You may or may not have noticed, but yesterday was pretty much the mother of bad days. Between being rejected from grad school, receiving my credit card bill and getting a pretty shitty practice teaching report from my AT, I wasn't feeling all that enthusiastic about life.

But that was yesterday. I suppose I made lemonade after all. I refuse to wallow. I can write anywhere, I know I'm a good writer and apparently, I'm meant to be somewhere else, doing something else. I'm just pissed about having to find a new way of getting out of my hometown. 

Regardless, I found an odd source of relief today. I usually hate my curriculum development and evaluation class. And I mean hate it. When I walked in, that hadn't changed. I was still in a bad mood about my PT report, I was tired because I was so mad that I hadn't gotten to sleep until late this morning and it turns out, I forgot to take my meds. It was a triple threat for trouble.

Our class picked up where it left off on Tuesday. We'd been split into subject areas, given nine students, given evaluations and told to write out their report cards. Today, my prof split our subject area groups in half. I was in the half that got sent to the cafeteria down the hall. When our prof reappeared, he had envelopes in his hands. Turns out we were going to be the parents of the nine imaginary students and our other classmates were going to be the teachers. Woot! Parent/Teacher night! In all of my prof's envelopes, he had our fake child's report card as well as our identities. I was Barbra. My husband was Stanley. He got to be the calm, level-headed one. My mission was to constantly be crying, be absolutely hysterical and get the teachers to divulge as much information as possible about a kid that was bullying my imaginary son.

I'm a shy person. I'm not usually very good at this sort of thing. I always break character because I'm too busy giggling nervously. That or I can never overcome the shyness and nerves to really embrace the character. Yeah... I have no clue what the hell happened today but my professor made sure to announce that my take on Barbara was far more dramatic than the Barbara of his other class and that I had won the Oscar. Alas, my prize was only in name and not in statue form. Seriously though, he could have given me a chocolate Oscar. After all, I succeeded in my mission!

Thank you! Oh, thank you! I wasn't expecting this! It's such an honour! Does anyone have a glass of milk?

I was a complete lunatic. I yelled at people, I created a scene (twice), I talked circles around some teachers, I was wailing and fake crying... I really think that I lost my mind. I got half the teachers to tell me inappropriate things about the kid who was bullying my imaginary son. I also got a good portion of them to promise me some really inappropriate things regarding the bully. I had fun flustering a couple teachers. Then I got into a really loud fight with the parents of the child bullying my imaginary child. My husband Stanley would simply nod and agree with me, occasionally taking over the questioning of the teachers while I carried on. Our parent/teacher interviews were the longest, most dreaded and in the end, most annoying. I was jokingly offered Valium at the end of class.  I take that as recognition of a job well done.

I act like an idiot all the time. I mumble snide comments all the time. My classmates know I'm a little silly. I don't think they were expecting what they got today. I think I genuinely scared a few of them. Truth be told, I'm a little scared too. 

Beware to the children/parents/teachers/administrators dealing with my future children. I will go crazy on yo asses if my kids be bullied. 

Lauren.