Nathan Xavier
July 06, 2022 5:02 PM
[Staff Lounge] A Significant Anniversary by Nathan Xavier
Nathan sat in the staff lounge, looking over his lesson plans for this week. He had a two year alternating schedule for Advanced and Beginner classes, and a three year one for Intermediates, to make sure they covered all the necessary topics before each cohort of children moved up to the next level, but each year he did like to look over the plan, maybe join two closely related lessons together to add something new, or adjust the order to make more sense for the seasons, but by now, he had a pretty solid syllabus and most of his adjustments were for optional lessons that he felt weren't making their point as well as they should, or to account for new research and discoveries in the field of Herbology.He looked up as the lounge door opened and smiled as he greeted his colleague. "Another year," he commented to commemorate the earliness of the term. And then, because it was a calculation he had only recently made and he was still a bit startled by its result, he added. "It's my twentieth one here." They were not all teaching herbology. He had started as the groundskeeper and then went back to school for a teaching certificate, but it was still a long time to have worked for the same employer. Worth noting. Perhaps worth celebrating. Maybe he should bring donuts tomorrow.
On the other hand, having spent twenty years at anything, particularly a job, was rather indicative of the fact that he was approaching an age of A Bit Old. He wasn't there quite yet, he didn't think, not having quite reached his sixties yet, but he was fairly sure that twenty years ago, he would have thought fifty-eight was very far from young. Truthfully, 'young' was no longer a word Nathan felt applied to him in any circumstance except perhaps by comparison to his own parents or Headmaster Brockert (and even with them, though the number of years in between was staying the same, it was a smaller and smaller proportion of his life, and felt less and less significant).
"How is yours treating you so far?"
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Nathan Xavier
[Staff Lounge] A Significant Anniversary
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