From the author: This is a continuation of the article “The Job I Never Dreamed of.” A series of essays about how if we agree to play in the given circumstances, then, as a rule, we win) My first job was as a history teacher in the ninth grade. I’m 22, I don’t know how to do makeup (this is important :-) at 22 without makeup it’s about 17), and so on the first day a ninth grader taps me on the shoulder and says, “Ha!” New girl! And today a new teacher will come to us. “It’s me, the teacher,” I mutter dissatisfiedly. The parallel of the ninth grades consisted of A, B, C, D, E and E, if A and B were somehow tolerant of my appearance, and C and G simply did not express any delight, then in classes D and E the children simply walked around their desks “plus or minus a meter” and responded to the words “Hello, sit down!” they didn’t react in principle. They locked me out in the class, they were openly rude, and in fact there was something not to like me for. Firstly, due to my full pregnancy, I flew past the university school practice. Secondly, the only school I had any idea about was mine, the one I graduated from, and I graduated from a good school in Berlin, where there were practically no C students, and if there were, it was such a solid A in the measurements of that school , where I now find myself on a teaching mission. Therefore, without blinking an eye, in the very first weeks I turned all the excellent students into C students. I knew for sure that the way they answered was not even worth a C grade at my school. The fact that these students got straight A's didn't stop me at all. In connection with this, I also received the reverent "love" of the head teacher of the school, who taught history here before me, because it turned out that the A's she gave had no authority in my eyes. A string of parents of my students, who were an order of magnitude older than me, reached out to me, the school management suggested that I prepare an open lesson, a complete failure was approaching, and there were no psychologists at that time))) I had absolutely no one to consult with, I had no acquaintances teachers, but I had an infant son, to whom I flew home and studied at home only with him. Was I worried about what was happening at work? This was the first such comprehensive fiasco in my life. The only person to whom I was able to voice all this horror was my husband, with whom we lived at that time in different cities. And over the phone, I somehow plucked up the courage and told him the story of my failure. By that time, the teachers at school no longer greeted me, supporting the head teacher. The situation, I’ll tell you, was not for the faint of heart. But we remember - It’s not that there were psychologists, there wasn’t even the Internet) My husband said - Don’t be upset. Now, if something didn’t work out for me in surgery, then it’s scary, because people’s lives, and history... well, they’ll need it, they’ll read it from the textbook themselves. Nothing bad happens. Play. And do you know what happened then? I had nothing to lose, and I stopped being a teacher. “I don’t like fools,” I told my students in a calm voice and for some reason they fell silent, “I think that any guy should know two subjects - history and geography.” I don’t care at all how you behave, you can sit with your back to me when I talk, you can not listen to me at all and continue to be rude, but the only offer to you is that I ask a question about history, you answer even from under the table. You can sit with your back to me, you can sit with your butt up, but a man must know history. I don’t know how it worked. Perhaps this permission to sit with their backs to me... they had nothing to oppose me... perhaps the fact that I singled out the boys, perhaps my sincere conviction that a man should know history (as I heard my dad say - a man should know history and geography at least five ).They listened to me, and I tried. To say that everything would change in an instant, no, not in an instant. I still had to suffer with D and E, they, apparently, sincerely and even before me, had no idea that you had to sit at a desk during lessons, Pyotr Sapozhnikov was a special ringleader. All deuces, in all respects)