Nostalgic Day

Since my room is so small, I have four boxes full of stuff out on the porch with a blanket covering them.  It's not very smart because they are right underneath a window.  What if it rains extremely hard and it starts leaking into my boxes?  They have been out there for a couple of years and no damage so far.  (Knock on wood).  One box contains a ton of loose leaf paper that I have accumulated over the years.  I will use that when I have my own classroom.  Two boxes contain stuff I saved from student teaching.  One box is filled with letters, awards, souvenirs, and stuff that students have given me throughout my student teaching, subbing, and computer aiding.  I went through that box today looking for some things.  I found a ton of letters from one of my high school friends.  Our first year of college, even though we talked online almost every moment that we were awake, we sent letters to each other.  I also found a letter from my mom and two letters from my dad.  The one from my dad was hilarious.  I texted him about it today and he said, "Wow, I actually wrote a letter!"  I saw many pictures that kids have drawn for me and many letters telling me not to go when I was student teaching.  One made me laugh because it was from a kid who always misbehaved.  In the letter, he told me he didn't want me to go and he told me to be careful driving.  The day I left, it was snowing very hard.  One thing I was searching for was a story I wrote in Creative Writing when I was a senior in high school.  a substitute teacher reminded me of it yesterday when she told me she had to write a 20 page memoir of herself.  In my assignment, I had to write a story about each year of school.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find that story.  So then, I asked my mom how old the Blueberry iMac is that we have sitting in our house that we never turn on.  It's from 2001.  Maybe my story is on there.  I turned it on and the computer works fine.  I found a ton of old stories I wrote for that class, but not the one I was looking for.  A few stories I read made me laugh, though.  My only guess is that I wrote it at school under my username and password that I had for school.  It's a ton of fun to look through old things and especially the ridiculously old computer that we have.  It brings back a ton of memories.  The students that gave me things will never remember that they did that.  However, that is one of the reasons that being a teacher is so unique.  It's those small gifts that make a teachers day.  After finishing the book Stories From a Teacher, it sometimes makes me think twice about even becoming a teacher.  After struggling for over three years looking for a teaching job, that just adds to the skepticism.  However, I can't think of any job I'd rather have.