I'm back! (rant and list)

Hello all. I meant to keep posting throughout the semester, but I have never had so much stress and unhelpful people, and bureaucratic crap to go through. The following is a rant about the semester, so feel free to completely ignore if you aren't interested.

I have had the worst semester ever in my life, so I fell of the face of the planet. My student teaching started off on a bad start when I  had to harass the coordinator for a week before classes started to get my assignment. Then I didn't know what date it started or ended because my lovely school doesn't see fit to make that clear at the beginning or really ever.

Then, I was placed with a band director that had no control over their classroom at all and I, as a brand new teacher, was expected to magically fix all the behavior problems. This person also undermined any sort of authority I had all the time so the kids didn't respect me at all. This person basically thought of me as a free secretary/assistant and would make me teach without her observation, which is required for me to improve and receive input. My supervisor that comes and observes me every so often was completely unhelpful and only succeeded in being completely discouraging, insulting, and a bit sexist. About a month before the semester was over, he said if things don't improve, I'm not going to pass. I had shown improvement and didn't really know what else I could do to improve the situation. I was incredibly stressed and hopeless.

I did end up passing because that teacher I worked with, although awful to work with, really fought for me. I'm so happy to never set foot in that school ever again and to have lots and lots of free time this summer.

Anyway, here is a list of things that kept me sane over this hellish, horrible time.

1) The Binding of Isaac

This adorable and creepy video game is addicting as hell. Isaac is a sweet little boy with a mother who tries to kill him because God told her to. The game features dungeon exploration clearly influenced by Legend of Zelda. Isaac starts in the basement to hide from Mom and works through creepy crawlies and monsters in the cutest cartoony style to kill his mother with the help of items, trinkets, tarot cards, and pills before she kills him. He ventures into this hellish dungeon nude and only welding his own tears as weapons. Each powerup and certain items changes his appearance, making him at times appear horribly disfigured and/or mutated. The game stays fresh because each dungeon is randomly generated with a huge number of creatures, mini bosses, and stage bosses. The deeper implications are pretty depressing, but give the game interesting layers of reality and fiction. If you have a pitch black sense of humor like me, you will like this game. I would play the game for about an hour each night after school to wind down and relax.

2) Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Making a complete 180 from Isaac, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a super addicting, cutesy Nintendo game.  You are the mayor of a town full of animals and the town looks kind of crappy with boarded up buildings and not a whole lot to do. It is up to you to build up the town with ordinances, public works projects, planting greenery, donating stuff to the museum, etc, etc. You can do anything you want in the game: go fishing, catch bugs, earn money, talk to villagers, make the town look like how you want, among many other things. I've played this game since it came out for the DS because my boyfriend played it and I've been hooked every since. This game was only out for about 2 weeks before school was out, but it helped me push through to the end.

3) Books of course!

Books also kept me sane. I read in every free moment. Even though a lot of the books I read in that time were kind of mediocre, they still gave me a nice distraction from my worries and kept me entertained in the long hours I sometimes had to sit around.

So that's it for today. My awful semester and the stuff that kept me sane. What stuff keeps you sane in crazy times?