Sick Days

Ever since I can remember, it's been very difficult for me to take sick days. I remember several times in high school, my dad would urge me to stay home and rest; usually I was too determined to give in. Sometimes it was that I thought I was going to miss out on something really fun at school if I stayed home. Sometimes I was sure that I would fail my next test if I didn't show up for class (can't really trust other note-takers, you know?). In college, taking a day off was unthinkable: most classes only met 1-3 times a week!

And now that I'm teaching, not much has changed. When I lived in California, I didn't like to stay home when I was sick because I had to make sub plans. And that was so much trouble. But then again, I didn't get all that sick in California. I'm sure it has something to do with all that sunshine and fresh air year round.

At my school here in Michigan, the policy is "crawl in, don't call in". In fact, we are officially given 0 sick days (they still pay us when we have to stay home due to sickness, but they don't give us a specified number of days so that we don't abuse it). So I have a lot of guilt when I stay home sick. And at my current job, I don't even need to make sub plans for when I'm gone because I'm not a classroom teacher!

But still I feel compelled to be at school when I am sick. The last time I was sick, I got up anyway and tried to get to work, only to turn around 10 miles into my commute when I realized I wasn't going to make it. And just this past Wednesday, I went in to work when I clearly shouldn't have. It was my colleagues in the special ed. department who urged me to go home. That was hard, because I felt that everyone else was judging me a wuss. On Wednesday, it was purely an upper respiratory issue that was making me feel miserable. But I threw up on Thursday. I kind of wanted to send out a mass e-mail to everyone to show that I was justified in staying home (but then decided against it). I've got to stop caring what other people think and just take care of myself, so that is why I'm taking today off too, to recuperate!!