Perhaps it’s the heat that blurs the hours and days together, stringing together a late spring malaise like clouds wafting lazily across the sky.

There are days—weeks even—when the prospect of having another student stare blankly back, face betraying no sign of comprehension, on a Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon, or Friday as the bell crawls to the final line, that lead me to imagine stuffing cotton balls into my ears and put on contact lenses weak enough so I can’t see how many of them are sleeping. On these days, you’ll find me cheek-down on my desk napping, just like the secretaries who sit across from me in the teacher’s office and the vice principal reclining in his armchair, legs raised on another chair, fan blowing across his face. On these days, I’m thankful Korea sanctions school office napping, something foreign in the states save some Montessori preschools that mercifully let teachers participate in naptime.

Like any job, this one has it’s fair share of tedium and discouragement to balance with the highlights. There’s little pinpricks everywhere—proverbial sticks of straw to be placed on the camel’s back: other teachers using your classroom without permission, students inappropriate calling you “hey man” after you’ve explained a dozen times, and a myriad of other things.

All comparatively insignificant issues, come to think of it. I oftentimes feel disappointed with myself for being emotionally bothered regularly by small drizzles relative to the deluges I’ll face back in the States, like a college student complaining to a homeless person in the Square about the dryness of the made-to-order grilled chicken breasts in Quincy dhall. It brings to mind a thousand-year-old reminder:  “The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out…. That is all you need to know.”

Yet I can’t ignore that the school’s (Korean?) culture has slowly ingratiated itself in my mentality, causing these irritations. Partially this has been brought about by empathy: understanding and relating to the Korean school world—and coming to love the students—requires shouldering its assortment of problems. That means nodding and offering support for colleagues and their problems and students with their teenage nature.

Soon, however, it will be time to leave that behind, and for those attitudes to end as well. It’s nearly time to tidy up the mental mess that’s accumulated, in a late spring cleaning of sorts. No more losing focus on the end game, the bigger picture far beyond my situation here. No more distractions and self-pitying for slights not deserving of any pity. Separate the wheat from the chaff, the superfluous from the necessary.

The director of the Fulbright Korea program entreated us to not compare to other situations of other Fulbright teachers. Admittedly, nearly all of us succumbed to this at some point in the grant year, whether through homestay situations, schoolyard politics, or rural isolation. However, as May rolls to a close and the last full month of the grant year looms, I find myself beginning to compare to the situations of fellow 2017 college graduates, a year into their jobs and starting to find success in their own right. Mentally, I suspect that the subconscious transition period has begun.

In a way, I’ve become impatient, chomping at the bit in anticipation for when I can return from this sabbatical. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of one’s growth, and sources of struggle have greatly diminished here, or so it seems. Maybe I will eat those words come Monday morning, but it’s inescapable that a proverb I’ve lived by since middle school—”Become comfortable being uncomfortable,” has morphed into becoming uncomfortable with being comfortable. Even while simultaneously knowing that I should respond to this calm and predictable present with thankfulness and relaxation, clearly I’ve lost the off switch. It’s been go, go, go for five years, and it certainly hasn’t stopped now.