I was up at 5:45am to watch adolescents give speeches....

I know, it totally doesn't sound like me.

My friend Tai (who refers to herself on this blog as Ms. South Korea) invited me to be a judge for the high school and junior high speech competitions being held in and around southeastern MN. Having been a major drama geek (yet in a glamorous, completely awesome way that got me lots of dates...um)in high school, I jumped at the chance. Plus, I got to judge people, and we all know how much I love that!

Now, as some of you may or may not know, I don't really like kids. I may have discussed it on this blog on occasion, I'm not really sure. Check the archives. Anywho, despite this general dislike, I do have a soft spot in my heart for quirky, smart, somewhat a-typical teenagers, which I developed by working at Seeds of Peace as a camp counselor for two summers in college. Now, I was not a very good camp counselor, as I don't like camp, and I'm not very good with kids in the first place, but I did discover that I was very, very good at reaching out to the kids that were too smart for the own good, held contempt for all that they surveyed, and generally lashed out against people as a preemptive strike in case those people didn't like them- basically me at that age. I mellowed a lot in high school when I inexplicably became popular, but before that I was a snarky, spiky, needy little middle schooler who could not WAIT to be like, a grown up. So I got along well with these kids, mostly because I didn't try to sugar coat everything, and allowed them to vent about the kumbaya bullshit we were doing when the news every day was basically that their homes had been destroyed and their futures were uncertain. Don't get me wrong, Seeds of Peace was the best thing I have ever done, but snarky kids need to be angry some times, and I let them be angry.

So, the speech competitions have a high percentage of kids like this- obviously not in the sense that their homes are being demolished by the IDF, but, you know, they are angsty. And I like that, because even though it's sometimes whiny and generally ridiculous, I love how full of life and hope they are. They bitch about everything because they really believe it can be changed. They are moody and manic, and it makes you remember what it felt like to be that age and feel your future was full of possibility, before you had to pay for insurance or balance a check book or deal with micromanagement (although, sometimes teachers are micromanagers). It reminds me of how much fun it was to do these competitions, to get really, really into it, and be so nervous you thought you were going to throw up for something that in the grand scheme of things, is really sort of meaningless. Now the only time I get nervous is when I think my boss is going to catch me blogging at work and I'm going to be fired, and that's not a fun nervous.

Today I'm at my last competition (blogging in the Spring Grove High School/ Middle School/ Elementary School hybrid library, which you can totally do when you're a grown-up... AWESOME!). I really like the dynamic of being a judge. Since I'm not a well-trained speech judge, I like to remind the kids to have fun and relax. I laugh at their humorous speeches, and intently listen to their serious prose. I joke with them before they start, and I write comments that are critical, but only because they are so full of promise. This experience has reminded me that I would really like to teach, but I don't want to go through all the political and administrative hoops that real teachers have to- I would be like that teacher in the movies that always butts heads with the principal and eventually leaves with a little cardboard box full of books while Ethan Hawke stands on his desk reciting "O Captain, My Captain" and mourning the suicide of Robert Sean Leonard. And that would just be weird. Especially since it would mean I was Robin Williams, and I was teaching at an all boys school. So instead of being a real teacher or Robin Williams, maybe I can volunteer my time as an assistant coach of something!