We’ve all heard the cliché about checked-out seniors around this time of year, but don’t let anyone tell you that a second-semester senior education major has it easy. If you see one of us holed up in the library for our fourth straight hour of lesson planning or walking dazedly around campus, invite us for some Starbucks. After all, we are student teaching and we thrive on caffeine. Student teaching is, by turns, a frustrating, fun, agonizing, exhilarating, thankless, and fulfilling ride through your own self-doubts. It's like the proverbial chaff being refined by fire. During this final semester, some of us work, some of us take classes, and we all complete a performance-based assessment called the edTPA. (When was anyone going to tell me that waiting for your score is nearly as hard as completing it?) Its three tasks call to mind "Harry Potter’s" Triwizard Tournament, only more populated and with even higher stakes.

You might think that I’ve got a screw loose, then, if I told you that I was desperate for something to do outside of school. Enter "Cavalleria Rusticana," a one-act opera by Pietro Mascagni. The production, performed in February by the Opera Theater at BGSU, brought internationally renowned tenor Shawn Mathey back to the stage.

"Cavalleria Rusticana" is set in 1890s Sicily. A man comes back from being a soldier to find that his betrothed had married another man. To spite her, he seduces one of the women from the village and ends up dead by the end. The show includes an off-stage chorus and a church choir (because the whole thing takes place on one action-packed Easter morning), so the music director was looking to find singers for this. A good friend of mine, who was in the on-stage chorus, asked if I would like to sing in the production.

Of course I would! I desperately missed being in a choir and I was happy to relive the spirit of my high school glory days of being in musicals, if only for a little while.

Boy, did I have the wrong approach. Operas are not much like musicals. For one thing, the entire thing is in song, Italian song. The handful of us making up the off-stage chorus had one rehearsal by ourselves, but I found myself attending dress rehearsals for the rest of the cast during the week between our rehearsal and what we in the business affectionately call “tech week.” I sat in the theater, enthralled by the cast and intermittently grading papers. I know, I'm a weirdo. I amused my friends with my outsider’s reactions to what was unfolding onstage.

I started out being grateful for the ability to perform in something again. I still was by the end of the last performance, but I had gotten more than I bargained for when I signed up to do this. I got the chance to perform again, yes, with all of the exciting energy that entails. Honestly, as impressive and fun as the performances were, it was the rehearsals that made me see how much work goes into quality music-making. These behind-the-scenes observations that I was lucky enough to do made hearing the shows all the more special. Just like during my musical days, I got that familiar letdown when it was all over. During rehearsals, I got the chance to spend time with my friends who were in the opera, and I got the chance to carve out a bit of time just for me away from school. This, in particular, was one of the things that I brought up in a conversation with a good friend who attended the show and asked how being in it was going.

"I’m really proud of you for being involved," she texted later that night. At first, I found it an interesting thing to say. She was proud of me for doing something that I enjoyed? I was proud of my friends in the show, and even of the friends who I had made just during tech week, for performing with passion in order to deliver a quality experience. On further consideration of her words, I was proud of myself as well. I found something apart from school that was not only constructive, but meaningful for other people.

I am only a teaching rookie, but I can see the writing on the wall (chalkboard?). Already, I can see that this is a consuming profession and if you are not careful, it can overtake your life to an unhealthy level. I am as dedicated to my own work and I will only become more so once I have a classroom of my own. Due to this, not despite it, I know how important it is to have an outlet that has nothing to do with school. You must make time for yourself if you hope to be your best for others. Our children deserve dedicated, rested, and fulfilled teachers who love what they do.