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It’s time for my annual New Year’s reflection post again somehow. This is the first that's not bookended by piles of snow taller than I am. 

2015 was crammed too full. I got my wisdom teeth removed almost exactly a year ago, and I still haven’t fully recovered from it. I finished a draft of my book. I graduated from grad school. I organized a reading for my friends. I had two jobs that I loved. I moved home at the beggining of the summer, and then moved again at the end of it. I missed New York more than I ever thought I would. I spent the summer with two stress fractures and a hole in the cartilage of my knee, and I still felt better than I did the previous year. I biked half the perimeter of Manhattan, listened to blue grass  in Brooklyn at 3:00am, and ate BBQ on rooftops in Harlem. I spent 8 months applying and getting rejected from more jobs than I care to count. I did so many interviews that they blur together. I finally got one. I moved to Tennessee for my first full-time teaching job. I moved into my first apartment of my own. I pulled off my first semester and convinced everyone that I knew what I was doing. I spent more time with 48 15-year-olds than I did with anyone else. I flew on 7 planes (my 86th - 92nd), rode on 10 buses, spent 44 nights in hotels and other people's houses in 11 states, and drove 6,500 miles. I saw my friends get published and act in plays and make movies. I hosted some dinner parties. I got paid to publish something for the first time. I saw Boston with snow drift-mountains, Providence in a blizzard, DC during the cherry blossom festival, and the Smoky Mountains with fall colors. I visited old friends, said goodbye to a lot of people, and met even more new ones. I only read 46 books and felt sad about it. I wrote less than I wanted to. I started paying student loans. I put the deposit on my future dog. I turned 26. For the last essay of my semester exam, I asked my students to write about the most important thing they learned this semester, inside or outside the classroom. 16 of the 48 wrote that they’ve become better writers, and 8 wrote that I taught them the importance of kindness. And though I suspect that 80% of them wrote those because they thought I’d give them a better grade, it still made me feel like I’d done something right. 

I’ve started off 2016 with my first sip of coffee in like two years (I survived it), as much reading-for-fun as I could cram in, new socks, dark chocolate, and some diligent Shakespeare research. I get my new dog at the end of the month. I have so many things to be grateful for. 

Wilderness Adventures

I’ve made it through an entire quarter. Report cards are out, and no parent has called to yell at me (yet). No one has dropped out, and I’ve only considered kicking students out of my class a few times. Marks of success. 

We had fall break a couple of weeks ago. If I don’t see fall foliage, my sadness lingers for a good ten months, so I threw some clothes and my camera in the car before school on Friday and ended up in Asheville on Saturday morning. I’ve been to Asheville 7 or 8 times, but never in the fall. The leaves weren’t quite ready for me, so I had to climb some mountains and find them. 

Right after I got home, I left for Field Studies. Each grade at the school does something together as a group immediately following fall break, and for 9th grade it’s a 2-night, 3-day camping trip. As one of the 9th grade advisors (and one of only 2 available females), I was enlisted to go. 

We loaded the school bus on Wednesday morning with the 49 students, 4 adults, and enough luggage to survive for several weeks in Siberia, then drove the 2 and 1/2 hours to a YMCA camp on the edge of the Smokies. 

A brief history of my past camping experience:

-Once my childhood best friend and I slept in a tent in her front yard for reasons that I can’t fully articulate. We were about 10 feet from her front door, and we still got scared when her cat started making noises outside. I recall some friendship-bracelet-making. 

-My cousins, aunt, and I spent a night in a tent in their front yard (also for reasons unknown). Though I seem to recall getting tired of it and going back to the house before bedtime. 

-A few of my best friends and I went camping once during high school. We slept in a 3 room tent but all ended up in the same room because we may or may not have been nervous wimps. One of the friend’s parents were in a cabin next door, so we could go inside whenever we wanted. 

That’s it. 

Thankfully, Field Studies was also the wimp version of “camping,” for which I am grateful. We were in open-air cabins instead of tents, which means that there were bunk beds and walls but only screens on the doors and windows. There were bathrooms in the cabins which reminded me of the bathrooms that high schools have underneath their footballs stadiums. I slept the 2 nights in a cabin with a dozen 14-year-old girls, wearing 6 layers of clothes, trying not to freeze, yelling for everyone to be quiet, and listening to chatter that left me wondering if I was ever actually a 14-year-old girl myself. I finally decided that I wasn’t. I think ages 13-15 I skipped. 

I never went to traditional summer camp as a kid, though I always wanted to. My summers were filled with church retreats, choir tours, and mission trips instead, so the only camps I’ve ever visited have been religiously affiliated. I looked for religion at the camp and found it in the cross on the dining hall wall and the “blessings” we sang before we ate. I have a theory that in The South, every school and camp is secretly a Christian one. 

Some camping highlights: 

-The raisins in the granola

-The grapes on the salad bar (which I subsisted on)

-Canoeing. Watching the students flip their canoes. Remaining securely in my canoe. 

-Visiting with coworkers (Thank you, coworkers.) 

-“Rock” poker with the boys. Because desperate times.

-The times when I sat close enough to the fire to feel my toes

-The times when no wild animals came into the cabin through our non-locking door

-Rocking chairs

-The time when the workers finally brought the water coolers out 4 hours after we arrived (after a couple of us had already braved a few desperate sips from the sink) 

-The time when I did not have to sleep in a hammock between bunk beds

-This guy

-This view

I got back to my house on Friday, and a few hours later my mom and sister arrived, excited for the Bell Buckle Arts and Crafts Fair. It's not just a normal arts and crafts fair. It's an arts and crafts fair on a scale you've yet to ever witness. Imagine Mardi Gras but in a miniature town with fudge and fair food instead of alcohol and cheerful middle-aged women instead of drunken tourists. We had to arrive at 7:30 in the morning so we didn't get stuck in traffic trying to park for an hour. My mom and sister bought home decorations. I considered buying a hedgehog. 

And now that I've experienced Field Studies and the Craft Fair, I feel that I've made it through initiation. My reward is Halloween candy and three weeks until Thanksgiving break. 

Fall

I’ve been teaching for six weeks now, which means it’s been six weeks since I’ve written one creative word. Which effectively makes me feel like a crazy person. 

My parents brought my bed up a few weeks ago. I now have internet. I bought a couch. 

The delivery people gave me a four hour window when it would be delivered, so I had to call my leasing office and ask if they’d be willing to let the delivery men in. 

“Well, we don’t like to. For liability reasons,” she said. “Don’t you, like, have any friends who can be there? Don’t you know anyone you can ask?” 

I almost asked her if the guy who takes my order everyday the coffee shop in town counts. We don’t know each other's names, but he smiles when he tells me my tea costs $1.91. Or maybe the saleslady at the other furniture store who tried to sell me a couch that was $500 over my budget, but she was too nice for me to escape from, so I spent 45 minutes pretending to be interested. 

Instead I told her, “No, I don’t know anyone. Except for my coworkers. Who will be at work with me.” Thank you for the boost of self-esteem. Also, if I did have friends, they’d probably be at work from 10-2:00  on Thursday, too. 

It’s my first one-bedroom apartment. And even though the rent is significantly higher than it should be because it’s a short-term lease, I still pay over $200 less than I paid for my individual bedroom in New York. 

The walls are thin and my neighbors are either blaring a vulgar family drama or having a constant domestic dispute, and my door has 3 locks that still don’t close quite as securely as I’d like. There was a notification stuck in my door today giving me a “friendly reminder” that I’m violating my lease by having an undisclosed pet without properly notifying the leasing office, and letting me know that my neighbors have complained about my dog. 

I don’t have a dog. 

I have 4 chairs, but no table. There’s no light fixture in my living room, so I set a lamp on one of my 4 chairs and grade papers on the floor next to it. We need fewer things than we think we do. 

I have complicated feelings about being back in The South. I keep making social mistakes. Like when one of my students was talking about the Young Republicans Club at school and I said, “Oh, that’s awesome that you guys have political clubs. Is there a Young Democrats Club, too?” 

Silence and blank stares. 

Someone finally said, “We’re in Tennessee…” 

Lesson learned. 

I can’t stay in Murfreesboro too long, so I go to Nashville and grade papers in the coffee shops. I really like Nashville. I think it has better coffee shops than New York. 

Parent’s Day was last Friday. I had to teach in front of 4 classes full of parents and then have back-to-back meetings with them for 3 hours. My TMJ almost got me, but I survived it. I haven’t talked so much to humans over the age of 15 in almost 2 months. 

A lot of parents told me how shy their kid is, and I told them how I used to be so shy it was painful. “It gets so much easier,” I kept reassuring them. One boy's parents told me how reserved their son is and how too much social interaction is exhausting for him. I said, “I totally understand, I’m the same way.” Another social mishap. Don’t worry, I corrected that one well.

I’ve realized that there aren’t enough hours to teach. I’m used to the teaching hours at Duke TIP—7 hours per day on weekdays and 3 hours on Saturday. I teach each of my classes here for 3 and 1/2 hours per week. I wish I could give them 3 hours of homework each night. Then again, I also want to keep my job and not be a cruel tyrant. 

I feel like I’ve finally gotten my feet under me enough that I don’t feel like I’m in constant chaos. Maybe I’ll try to do something wild, like read a book, soon. 

I’m ready for fall, but I’m not ready for the sun to set so early. Fall makes me miss New England and the entire Northeast. I miss apple picking adventures and October farmers markets and Sophie’s pie. But I’m also happy I get to teach here. 

In a Sudden Turn of Events

In the last 10 days, I’ve slept in 5 different hotel rooms, a haunted mansion (long story), a near-stranger’s house (an immensely kind near-stranger), and a boarding school dorm room. In other words, I’m homeless. (At least until Wednesday.) I’ve moved to a new state and started a new job with less than 24 hours notice. It’s been a long week. 

Of course it would happen that after the months and months I’ve waited for a job offer—the thousands of miles I’ve traveled, the dozens of hours of interviews, and more false alarms than I want to count—of course I would get two job offers on the same day. And of course that day would be less than a week before school started. 

I got an email from one school last Monday to arrange phone and Skype interviews. I got a phone call from the second school on Tuesday. They wanted an in-person interview. “School starts on Monday so…Can you be here tomorrow?” So I packed in an hour then drove the seven hours to Tennessee. I interviewed for half of the next day and then was offered the job. I did a Skype interview that night (at 10:00pm in a hotel room) and was offered another job. 

I thought I’d decided, then I changed my mind, then I changed my mind again. I slept some and changed my mind some more. Then on the way home the next morning, I called The Webb School, a boarding school in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, and told them yes. I got home Thursday afternoon, crammed as much as I could fit in my car, and headed back to Tennessee the next morning. I made it to Bell Buckle with a couple of hours to spare before I had to greet the new students and their parents in my classroom (my classroom!)  and act like I knew exactly what I was doing. One parent looked me up and down and said, “And you’ve taught before?” which I think I handled rather well. 

This last week has been surreal. I’ve successfully completed my first week as the new 9th grade English teacher. I’ve found an apartment in Murfreesboro, about 30 minutes away, that I get to move into on Wednesday. I know most of my students’ names. (I know fewer of my coworkers’ names.) I’ve been mistaken for the English department chair’s daughter three times. (She’s in 9th grade.) 

Bell Buckle, Tennessee, is not the place I ever imagined myself teaching. I imagined myself on the East Coast. I imagined New England in the fall. I imagined snow boots. I imagined a Harry Potter-style dining hall. 

I did not imagine fireflies and instantaneous downpours. I imagined an equestrian team, but not being surrounded by more horse farms that I’ve ever seen. I did not imagine a school that believes in “seersucker Thursdays” (only before Labor day, of course) and has a shooting club. I’ve spent the last 7 years almost always having the most southern accent in any classroom. (Which is saying something, seeing as how my accent is maybe a 10th as strong as anyone else’s in my family or hometown). Here I have no accent. 

Some things are what I imagined. The students dress formally for class—imagine the Chilton uniform in Gilmore Girls, but with less plaid. We have chapel every day and sing the alma mater in Latin. In my 9th grade class, we’re reading a book that I read in my 12th grade AP class. Tuition costs nearly as much per year as my undergrad tuition. During school breaks, teachers lead student groups on trips to France, Italy, Japan, and Cuba. 

For now, I’m trying to plan more than a day ahead and actually read the books before my class does (they already had the reading list before I was hired). And even though it’s not exactly what I imagined, the fireflies are nice. The mountains are nice. The students and faculty are so nice it makes me nervous--I think I've had a dozen strangers offer me a place to stay and help finding an apartment. I had forgotten this level of kindness and hardly know what to do with it. Everything is pretty nice. Being here is pretty nice. 

As of Late

Exactly a week after I got home in May, I got a phone call from the English Chair at a high school in New York City. “We’d like you to come in to interview in person as soon as possible,” she told me. “Are you available tomorrow?” 

“Well, you see,” I told her. “I’m in Mississippi.” 

“Oh,” she said. “Hmm. How fast can you get a plane ticket?” 

During the next ten hours of ticket buying, sleeping, packing, and rushing to the airport, I received another surprise email from a school in Richmond. “How soon can you get here?” 

I like to imagine what a normal interview might be like. I’d meet with a potential boss. We’d shake hands and then Potential Boss would offer me a seat. I’d wear something nice but not miserable. Potential Boss would ask some questions and tell me about the job. Potential Boss would then ask me if I had any questions, and I’d come up with some to seem interested, even if I didn’t really have any. We’d both smile a lot, and I’d try not to fidget too much. Our chat would last about an hour, and then Potential Boss would thank me for coming in and ask me how soon I could start the job. I’d buy a celebratory snack on the way home. 

But private school interviews are not normal interviews. Private school interviews start a lot like normal interviews, except for the part where you travel a thousand or so miles to meet Potential Boss and are housed in hotels far fancier than any hotel you’ve ever been in in your life. You arrive at the school at an absurd hour in the morning to meet Potential Boss. The interview follows the aforementioned protocol, except I’m wearing a suit that makes me feel like I’m a straitjacket, and instead of the part where I’m offered the job and then go get my celebratory snack, I’m then brought to Potential Boss #2. Then the process starts again. And then again. And then again. Until I’ve met with the Headmaster, the Assistant Headmaster, the Dean of Faculty, The English Chair, the Head of Academic Affairs, the Athletic Director, and the entire English department faculty. At some point I’m fed lunch, generally with the whole English department, which means I do a lot of looking enthusiastic and answering questions and very little eating. And then I’m given a campus tour by a carefully chosen overachieving student. 

And at some point I have to teach a class. This class can be anywhere from a 7th grade class to an 12th grade class, from 12 students to 20. This class lasts an hour. In addition to the students, my audience includes 6 or 7 faculty and administrative members. I refer to this class as the Stress Test. 

After about 10 interviews, the lunch interview, the campus tour, some class visits, and the Stress Test, I get to leave. But then I have to go back the following day to finish whatever couldn’t be crammed into the day before. If it’s a boarding school, I also have to do dinner and breakfast group interviews/pretend eating and help with dorm duty. 

And then, finally, after two days of marathon interviewing and malnourishment, Potential Boss shakes my hand, thanks me for coming, and tells me I’ll hear more news soon. 

I fly home. (Or, in the case of this particular trip, I fly to Atlanta where my mother picks me up and we drive 8 hours to the next school.) A couple of weeks later, I receive two things. 1. A reimbursement check for my travels. 2. An email, which says some variation of “Unfortunately, we had to go with a more experienced candidate” or “a candidate who met more of our needs outside the classroom,” which I interpret to mean “a former Harvard professor” or “a new football, lacrosse, and soccer coach.” 

I’ve now repeated this process four times. And here I am, waiting for the next invitation. Here are some things I’m doing while I wait: 

-Searching for/applying to more jobs

-Writing follow-up emails for said jobs

-Doing phone/Skype interviews

-Watching True Detective 

-Watching other TV shows that I’m more reluctant to admit (HGTV shows. Dance Moms.) 

-Writing more followup emails

-Painting

-Reading some of the books on my “To Read” list. 

-Reading other books I’ll neither bring in public nor admit to reading (There are some wonderful YA books. And then there are these.) 

-Looking for tutoring jobs anywhere within a 100 miles radius (It seems no parents want their children to learn in the summer. Or else they don’t want to pay more than $10 for it.) 

-Apologizing for writing so many follow-up emails

-Looking for freelance editing

-Making up reasons to go to town (“I have $2 off my next Panera Bread order.” “I really want some figs, and the closest grocery store that has them is 50 miles away.” 

-Sitting on my couch

-Wishing I wasn’t sitting on my couch

-Feeling guilty about sitting on my couch

-Eating so many frozen grapes that I feel sick

-Writing letters

-Writing nothing else

-Attending family gatherings, where we do things like feed my cousins' alligator, Wally 

-Sending more applications

-Looking up dogs I want to buy when I (hypothetically) move

-Waiting for good news. 

Commencement

I’ve tried to write for weeks, but I’ve hardly written a word since my last assignment was due. The last few weeks of school were so busy that I felt like I was running daily marathons. Everything I tried to write felt too sentimental. Everything was sentimental. 

I graduated last Wednesday. Most of my friends didn’t, because they wanted more time to work on their theses. It was the smart decision for anyone who planned to stay in New York anyway. But I was determined to graduate in May all along, determined to prove the professors wrong who told me no second-years walked in May—that would mean turning my thesis in in March, which most people thought was preposterous. “What’s the rush?” people kept asking. But I wanted to be done. I wanted to wrap things up neatly and walk away at he end of the school year. I wanted to start a full time job in the fall that I’d need an advanced degree to get. And I wanted out of New York. Two years, I told myself the spring before last when I accepted Columbia’s offer. Two years and I’ll go to a place I’d rather be. 

What I didn’t know was that in those two years, I’d find a community of friends unlike any I’d ever been a part of. I didn’t know that I’d be one of the only ones to leave the city once classes were over. Brown launched us ceremoniously into the world once our four years were up. Columbia expects us to linger. 

I had my thesis conference a few weeks ago and one of my readers, a former professor, hugged me goodbye and whispered in my ear, “You’re gonna get this published, and you’re gonna get a job.” Which is exactly what our professors are warned against saying, but it’s sometimes what we need to hear. Then there was our Thesis Anthology Launch (aka prom) which was exactly what prom is supposed to be. Full of friends, nostalgia, and painful shoes. There were reunion parties, BBQ parties, dinner parties, after parties—any excuse for us to be together while we were all still in one place.

 I spent the last couple of weeks saying a lot of goodbyes that I didn’t want to say and a lot of see-you-laters when I didn’t want to say goodbye. I got my MFA. I left my roommate/best friend alone in what I will always think of as “our” apartment. I packed up my room and loaded it into a U-Haul and drove to Mississippi with my family. 

People keep asking “What now?” All of my belongings are in boxes squeezed wherever they can fit throughout my living room and kitchen because there are too many to fit in my bedroom. My bed is propped against the wall in my hallway. I don’t want to unpack anything because I don’t know when I’ll be leaving next. 

The last couple of months have been full of interview after interview, then second interviews, then silence. Repeat. All I can do is keep waiting. I sent in some last minute applications for jobs in New York. Not because I think I made a mistake in leaving, but because I want the option of changing my mind. So my answer is that I don’t know. But for now I’ll repack the boxes, this time with bubble wrap, and keep waiting until I know the answer. 

Waiting Game

These past few weeks have been hectic. At the end of February, I braved the snow walls and took a bus to Boston for a teachers hiring conference. For two days, I sat in a in a conference room in my ill-fitting suit and blister-causing heels typing my thesis while waiting to see if any schools wanted to interview me. There were representatives from over 200 prep and boarding schools in the room across the hall, scrolling through our candidate files and deciding who was worthy of an interview. “This is basically speed dating,” one man said to me. “I think I might be very bad at speed dating,” I told him. Luckily I got to talk to 9 different schools, and I left feeling like it was worthwhile. 

I added the final revisions to my thesis on the 5 hour bus ride back to New York, and sent it to the printer as soon as I got home. Then I had to wait for it to be printed over the weekend so I could turn it in that Monday. I turned in 206 pages of a book draft, and even though it might double in length after I add everything in the next draft, at least it’s a start. And now I just have to wait for the list of professors I can choose from to be my thesis readers, and after that I’ll have to wait for my thesis conference in May. 

Including the schools I’ve interviewed with and the schools I’ve applied to online, I’ve now applied to over 30, from Miami all the way to Vermont. Now I just have to wait for responses, wait to see where I’ll be this time next year. 

I had all four wisdom teeth removed at the beginning of January, and since then, I’ve been waiting for my mouth to feel normal. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting. For the past month, I’ve just been trying to hold out until I could get home to do X-rays to see what’s going on. 

I’m a patient person (most of the time). But so much waiting is exhausting, especially when there’s no guaranteed pay-off. But we’ve been waiting so many months for spring, and the temperatures in New York last week were finally in the 40s/50s. Spring break is finally here. Daylight savings has finally started. All of the X-rays are fine, and there’s nothing wrong with my teeth. The first day of spring is tomorrow. Maybe it’s not much, but these are the much-needed reminders that our patience is worth it.