MALAYSIA - The year-end school holidays are never "long" enough to accomplish the many tasks that pile up over the months.

REMEMBER the recipe for that gloriously glazed roast chicken that someone handed you last June which you'd put away saying that you would wait for the "long holidays" before you tried it out?

And that best-selling novel everyone was talking about? You wanted to read it but had to wait for the "long holidays" when you had more time. Or the prickly weeds that are choking the life out of your pink anthuriums? You'd put away, saying that you'd wait for the "long holidays" when you had more time.

You'd told your neighbours that you were "monitoring the situation" and would really get down to business during the end-of-year break.

The overflowing wardrobe, the layer of dust on the bookcase, the peeling strips of paint on the gate - they were all on your to-do list for November and the "long holidays". And now that November has come and you've taken stock of all the things you have to accomplish, you realise that the "long holidays" are perhaps not really that long after all.

Well, for starters, by some unfortunate outcome of random selection, your name has turned up again on the list of SPM invigilators, making it three times in a row.

They said it was random selection, when you enquired at the education office. "Purely coincidental" were their exact words, but you have a strange feeling that you were replacing someone else whose name had appeared earlier and who is probably now swaying to the rhythm of the conga with frangipani tucked behind his ear, in some exotic beach resort.

When those long dry hours of invigilation are up, you will have to attend the examiners' meetings and begin marking the examination scripts that have been allocated to you. You can't complain about that because you volunteered ever so willingly to be part of the pemeriksa (examiner) team. You remember also that you are on the time-table committee in school and that your services will be required rather frequently.

You feel like kicking yourself for announcing to the entire school staff that you would "pretty much be at home" for the entire holidays. Your head of department has already sent you a text message reminding you about the language module you have to get ready before December.

Meanwhile, another of your favourite begonia plants has just succumbed to weed attack. Perhaps you should just uproot your whole garden, give away all your plants and cement the entire porch like the man who lives two doors away with his three Rottweillers.

When you get round to thinking about it, you sometimes feel that a major part of your teaching life has also been like that. Trying to push your way through the tangle of weeds that strangle and threaten to squeeze the joy of teaching out of you.

Just when you feel that you have made a breakthrough, another thorn creeps up to prick you where it hurts. Or when you finally feel that you have produced a magnificiently vivid bloom, a malevolent voice whispers in your ear that those flowers would have bloomed anyway, with or without you.

And that is one reason why I feel the longer end-of-year school holidays are so much needed by us teachers. So much happens to us in the course of the school year and it is impossible to be completely unaffected by what we experience, no matter how mundane or insignificant it may seem.

At times we are not even aware of the things that touch us. There is no time between the routine of the school week to sit down and think about why we feel a little less cheerful at the end of a particular school day than in the morning.

But if we look closely enough we will find that the things that affect us so much are sometimes not big. In fact, it is the minor things that affect us. The feeling of being snubbed when students pass you by without a "good morning" or "good afternoon".

The rude manner in which some students answer your questions. The way you feel slighted when no one in the class bothers to get you a chair for your table. The feeling of being underrated when your student goes to another teacher for help in your subject.

A casual remark by a colleague that someone else does a better job with class management than you do. When someone else parks in your usual spot. Small things. Things that are in themselves almost insignificant but amount to a considerable weight over the school term.

These are the little nicks, the cuts or grazes that we have no time for. We are alert for the bigger stuff like salary increments and awards and we think that our whole teaching morale, drive and motivation hinge on these "big" things.

Some of us wonder why, with each passing year, we feel a little less passionate about teaching and we often put it down to the more "important" things.

We are, to an extent, right of course because we are discontented with what we perceive as injustices. The irony is that many dedicated teachers are affected not by the major issues but by trivial ones.

I know teachers who feel more disturbed by students' inattentiveness or an unflattering nickname than being sidelined for a long overdue promotion.

And eventually it is the accumulation of these little things that rob us of the sense of fulfilment we should have in our work ... like weeds that creep up slowly around us, a little at a time.

The slight disappointments or irritations you brush off daily keep piling up until you feel a despondency in your spirit and an apathy towards your profession.

Many times, of course, things happen to us which we have no control over. We cannot for instance ensure that each student in the school regards us with the respect due to us. We cannot ensure that we will always be given a fair deal by those above us.

We cannot ensure that students will always pay careful attention to our lessons. But as best-selling inspirational author Rick Warren puts it:"You can't control those times when other people create problems for you but you can choose how you respond to them. You cannot choose all the circumstances that come into your life but you can choose whether those things will make you a bitter person or a better person. It is your responsibility. No one can ruin your life except you."

If you agree with Warren then perhaps the long holidays are the best time to do some soul-searching and begin removing some of the weeds and thorns that have been clinging to your teaching mantle without even your realising it.