Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Score!

Wow.

So yesterday might have been one of the most frustrating days I've ever experienced. Ever. I talked to Cam on the phone from around 8:40 to 10:00 last night, and I told him in gory, hurried, crazed detail what all happened yesterday, so I'm not in the mood to recap it (which is good, I think, since that means I got it out of my system for the most part, and it was doing me NO good in there), but suffice it to say I cried more than three times yesterday out of sheer frustration, anger, and anxiety/fear. No good, no good.

But then I got to the hotel, and I laid in bed, and I talked to Cameron--talked at him for about an hour, and then I was capable of real conversation after that--and then I curled up and went to sleep. And it was nice. The bed was comfy, it wasn't too hot or cold, and, though I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 (okay, okay, I snoozed 'til 6:10), on the whole I had a good night in a hotel, which is always questionable. (Though I was annoyed when, after I made a point of getting online to turn off my facebook text messaging so no one's midnight internet-social-club trollings would wake me up via cell phone, my text message song played at MIDNIGHT...and it was my own dear brother. Don't you worry; I'll sacrifice him later.)

And then today! I got up around 6:10, took a long shower, plucked my CRAZYOUTOFCONTROL eyebrows back to a nice curve-and-veer, put on a bit of makeup, made a half-assed attempt at blowdrying this ridiculously thick hair, grabbed a yogurt cup, some tea, and a cup of cereal, and drove out to the middle school. I sat in the car for a few minutes getting my bearings together--stifling fear that these would be hard-nosed, scary people

[Oh, hey, more good news! I just had to stop typing mid-sentence because I got a phone call from my doctor (they were part of the scary-awfulness of yesterday) letting me know they figured out THEIR snafu and can actually get me the ABSOLUTELY VITAL medicine for my stomach so I don't have to go without it! Yea! Three cheers for no gut pain because of a technical mix-up!]

Um, what was I saying? Oh, right, so I sat in the car until 7:45 stifling fears that I would meet people who were scary and mean (really, I spend most of my life trying to remember that most people aren't actually scary and mean; they're just people), and then I got my papers together and went in.

A very nice security guard showed me where the main office was, and the only even sort of scary-mean person I met was the lady behind the desk who snappishly told me, "Yeah, okay," when I told her who I was and why I was there. Then she, more nicely, told me to sit, so I did. And then the VERY nice principal came and shook my hand, said he'd be a minute, gave me a form to fill out, then showed me a room to sit in to fill it out. He said he'd be back in with someone else ('oh, no, who?') in a few minutes.

So I had to fill out this form that asked me questions about my plans and philosophy for teaching. Then the principal came back in and brought with him another VERY nice woman. And then the three of us talked for about an hour. About forty minutes in, the principal said, "So the thing I need to know the most is if you're going to accept this position."

WOOOOOOO


I told him about what TfA said about theatre, and I gave him the numbers for people to talk to in the Houston regional office. He said he definitely wanted to let them know that he felt it was a good idea to let me do both the theatre and English, but we agreed that I would come on as an English teacher, no matter what.

He asked me to come in later this afternoon, as long as it wasn't an inconvenience, to meet and watch the theatre club kids rehearse!


Of course, when I told my dad, he asked me if we'd talked about money, and, no, we really hadn't, except for the principal's saying that I'd get paid extra for working after school with the theatre club. It doesn't occur to me to talk about money--I guess that's part of why I do so well in the arts and academia; no one expects to get a lot of money there, so it's not a problem that they don't think of it in interviews, etc., ha--but I guess I should bring that up at some point. And I think I'll need to call TfA and let them know how it all went. I wonder if I'll have to go through all the seminars on interviewing now that I've already done the interview and been offered a position.


So, barring just signing the papers, you're reading the words of the next English and possibly theatre teacher in the fifth ward. :)

(I'm glad this part was easy; I'm sure I'll need the energy later!)


current music: Fiona Apple, "Sleep to Dream"

2 comments:

Rex said...

isn't the fifth ward a scary place?

Anonymous said...

Woot! Congratulations, girl!