First Day Jitters - No Matter How Old You Are

A veteran teacher told me today that she was so nervous, she was nauseated.  She has been teaching for well over a decade.  I am entering my 18th year (14 in the same school), and I'll admit that I was also nervous at the start of the day.

No matter how old you are, the first day leads to butterflies.  I would imagine that a teacher's nerves come from a different source that those of a student.  It isn't like we are wondering who will sit at our lunch table or whether we will get lost on the way to class.  We worry about much sillier things.  I, for example, have spent every first week of school for the last seventeen years wondering if I forgot how to teach during the summer.  It has been two months since I taught anything to anyone, after all.  What if I don't know how to do this anymore?  I have dreams in which I cannot get my classes under control.  This past year, I had a dream in which our new head of school demanded to know what was on specific pages of the textbook.  He is not at all like that, but my brain played that trick on me.

I saw an interview once with a stage actress who had been doing the same show for several years.  The interviewer asked if she still got nervous before going on stage.  She said that she did and that if she ever had a day when she wasn't nervous, she would know it was time to stop.  She talked about using the nervous energy for her performance.  If her character was supposed to be angry, she could take the adrenaline of her nervousness to fuel her shouting.  If she was supposed to be sad, she could use the nerves to make herself cry.

Last night, as I watched the women's gymnastics in Rio, I noticed how each of them was handling nerves as well.  Everyone had them, I'm sure, but some seemed more willing to use them to their advantage than others. Maria Hernandez seemed to be using the adrenaline to add  dance-y moves to her routine.  Simone Biles was using hers to dig in and gain power for vaulting.  One poor girl from China made a simple mistake and wasn't able to recover from the nerves for the rest of the night.  She fell several times.


Based on the experience of students, teachers, actresses, and gymnasts, I have come to realize that the trick isn't to eliminate butterflies.  The trick is to use them well.