On breaking too early

I'm not ready for holidays.

It sounds like a silly thing to say, but I'm not.  If you work in a school, then you become accustomed to rhythms and the rhythm that dictates everything is that of the four terms.  Ten weeks, then two weeks' holiday.  Rinse and repeat until Summer.  Ten weeks is as much as you can take when you're surrounded by kids who are either a delight or a challenge.  After ten weeks, it grows old and a two week break is just what you need.

But not this year.  Thanks to the upcoming Melbourne Commonwealth Games, the school term in Victoria has been completely skewed.  Instead of our ten weeks for first term, we've only had six.  It sounds good, until you take into consideration the fact that the following three terms will be extended to compensate for this.  So we can look forward to one twelve week term and two eleven week ones after that.

I'm simply not ready for this holiday.  Nobody's prepared for it.  The weather is all wrong.  It doesn't feel right.  We should have re-set our clocks at the end of daylight saving and started waking up on colder and darker mornings.  Autumn should have begun.

Instead, I said goodbye to Glenys, the teacher librarian at work, and both of us felt odd.

"It feels weird," I said and she agreed.

It's not as though I won't appreciate the break.  I'm just - you guessed it - not ready for it.