Onward Go We

Part of the difficulty of teaching is the population you serve. Teenagers are self-sculpting, mercurial children in adult bodies who scoff and till the ground w/ scuffling shoes so much more effectively than mercurial children in children’s bodies. They still inhabit a time in life – perhaps the last time – when authenticating your own failure can be an empowering act. I’m talking about acting out of spite – the attitude of “I’ll hurt myself openly and quickly before you can invisibly and inexorably wear me down into a small speck of who I am now.”
You see adults do this, too, of course, but without the animating fuck you panache of teenagedom.