From USA Today

One of the more interesting parts of this job is that, by nature of the types of students I work with, I benefit from keeping up with with the international news. Currently, we have about a dozen students in the program from Libya. Through conversations in and outside of class, our staff has learned about the hardships, fears, and gut-wrenching uncertainty of what's currently going on in that country. Many students have family in Benghazi and Tripoli. They are having difficulty contacting anyone in Libya because of the prolonged media/technological blackout. I can't imagine what that would be like: to be in a strange and alien place, separated from your family, knowing that violence is being perpetrated against the people of your country. And worse -- to not know if your loved ones are okay. 

Several of the male Libyans have received e-mails from their government, telling them that they must either go to Washington, D.C. and protest the United States' stance of silence on the revolution, or else risk being recalled back to Libya. We are being told to counsel students through this difficult time. 

The best way to help is to stay informed. The BBC News Web site is doing a good job of covering the story. I would also recommend The Guardian's coverage of the events in Libya. For live, streaming coverage visit Al Jazeera English, on YouTube.

We survived!

Though, not for lack of trying on the part of Mother Nature. A gigantic winter storm swept through the Midwest and much of the United States last week, playing havoc with driving conditions and forcing the university to shut down operations for two days. I used the extra time off to lesson plan, watch the directors' commentaries on every horror movie DVD I own, and catch a cold. (Who says you can't be productive in your spare time?)

Last week was also unique for the fact that my boss's boss, the director of INTERLINK, was in town to observe and/or audit our program. He had originally planned to observe each teacher (there are eight of us) in both our RW and CS classes to make sure that we are operating as close to our student-centered focus as possible. However, due to the weather, he only observed a handful of us -- myself included -- in either our RW or CS class. I'm going to state the obvious: having your boss's boss looking over your shoulder isn't exactly a stress-free experience. Though we knew he was coming weeks in advance, most of us planned activities for the week that were specifically tailored to showcase as much student participation as possible. Whether or not we hold to the same standards when we're not being observed is debatable; I think it's human nature to want to come off as competent and so we all make adjustments when they are needed.

Still. I think I did well. I mean, he observed my CS class for about an hour (which we spent doing student presentations) and had only minor notes during the one-on-one feedback session that afternoon. In this case, I think my newness was to my advantage. I said, "I know I'm young enough and new enough to teaching to be sure that I don't know everything. I'm not going to get it perfect out of the gate. What works for one class might not work for another and the reverse is also true. I am okay with making mistakes. If I learn from them, I get better." Which seemed to be, you know, kind of what he was looking for in the first place.

New challenges already this week: today I had to deal with my first instance of student plagiarism. I asked one of my students to write out, in their own words, a summary of everything that has happened in  the novel (The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe) up through Chapter 7. The student e-mailed me what they had written and, by gummit, if it wasn't lifted verbatim from eNotes.com. (The student didn't even fix the formatting issues -- spacing, font size, indentation -- but just copy/pasted things exactly as they were seen on the Web site.) I asked one of my mentor teachers what I should do in this situation, as INTERLINK has no step-by-step policy for dealing with plagiarism (even though they take a "no tolerance" stance against it). She told me that it was important to nip this issue in the bud, so I e-mailed the student immediately and informed them that the assignment they submitted was unacceptable because it had been copied from eNotes, that they would receive a "0" for the assignment, and that they were in danger of failing the class if they continued to plagiarize sources. I blind-copied the student's CS teacher, as well as my boss.

I didn't take any pleasure sending that e-mail or sniffing out plagiarism. Honestly, I knew that it was a problem in universities and most other academic settings and that I would have to deal with it eventually. But at the same time, I'm just like, "Geez, just how stupid do you think I am? If you can find this stuff online, so can I." I'm also fortunate in that this week -- Week 5 -- has a block of time set aside for one-on-one evaluations. On Thursday and Friday, I will sit down with each of my students and let them know how they are doing in the class, where/what they need to improve, and whether or not they will pass to the next level if they continue to perform as they're performing. There's going to be a lot of "tough love" at these meetings, I can tell.

This:

has (not surprisingly) led to this:

which, honestly, means that I'm doing a little of this:

See? Even teachers get excited about snow days.

I had a suspicion that they might close the university. All the cars driving by on the highway outside? Sound like they're driving over ball bearings. The ice has hit, and it's hit hard. Now it's just a matter of making sure that the power stays on despite the extra weight on the wires and transformers. If it does happen to go out in my area, I've been offered a place to crash by a couple of the veteran teachers who live close by. It's nice to be taken care of, even when I'm far from home.

Until that point, though, I figure I'm pretty sturdy. I've got candles (they were out of the emergency kind, so in the event of a power outage my apartment will smell like hazelnut and apple pie) and enough junk food to get me through the worst of the storm. Cookies for dinner? Mm, yes please!

(Just kidding, mom. I'm eating "real food," I promise.)

It's the end of my second full week of teaching and, to be perfectly honest, I'm plum tuckered out. Some activities went well, and others did not go as well as I would have liked. In either situation, I feel as if I am getting to know my students a bit better -- I am learning what they like, what they respond to, and how I need to structure certain activities to get the best/most responses. I've learned that you can spend an entire evening building what you are sure is going to be a great lesson, only to find out that you overshot the vocabulary, or forgot a step, or missed the target completely. It's very humbling. It's also the nature of the job itself: teaching is such a dynamic, organic process that it's virtually impossible to anticipate how well/how poorly something will do.

And in the end, maybe it's not so much a "failure" as a "learning experience." It's not the fault of the students; it's probably not even your fault as a teacher (although I tend to want to shoulder that responsibility, mostly because I'm the one standing up in front of the room). It's just the way that a real, live classroom functions. Expect the unexpected.

Also. I posted an alternate version of this on my Tumblr, but this has generally been my attitude toward lesson planning this week (in super geeky .gif form):

Monday:



Tuesday:



Wednesday:



Thursday:



Friday:



Here's to the weekend! :D

I was reliably informed before I started to teach that there would come a day when I would have enough anecdotes about teaching/my students to fill a book. I think, given the next two examples, I'm going to have enough by the end of the term to fill several.

1. My RW students are reading C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe for class. Last week, we worked on making predictions about books based on their covers (a proverbial sin, I know). Every student is working from the same copy of the book. It looks like this:

I was just curious to see what vocabulary they knew out of the gate, so I had them name the things they saw on the cover of the book. I got the expected responses: "castle," "lion," "woman," "horse," "trees" (pretty good vocabulary, considering). Then, from some corner of the classroom, I distinctly heard the word "penis." I thought I'd misheard. I went on with the rest of the vocabulary. A few seconds later I heard it again, and this time there was no mistaking -- someone had just dropped the "p-bomb" in class. 

I said, "what?" (while probably coloring eight shades of pink) and asked that side of the room for clarification. One student held up the book and pointed to the pillar on the right-hand side of the cover. "I think this is penis," he said. A few other students nodded their agreement.

I have a sneaking suspicion that he knew perfectly well what it was -- maybe he didn't have the exact word for it -- but he looked pretty serious when he said it. I mean, I don't want to make assumptions about what they're teachings kids in Anatomy 101 these days (or Intro to Architecture, for that matter), but it could be mighty embarrassing if that student ever visits the Roman Coliseum on an architectural tour.

2. I've got a pretty diverse group of talkers in my classes. Some students like to contribute often, while others I sort of have to, well, pull it out of them. One of my students has absolutely no problem speaking up in class -- and he does so to such an extent that it's almost distracting. He's a bright kid, eager to learn and very motivated (he came to me during the first week of class and asked for extra homework -- extra homework, people). He's also got a great imagination. During a free-writing exercise in which I asked my students to imagine what they might see if they ever went through the wardrobe and into Narnia, he came up with an elaborate story about how he'd use the wardrobe as a time traveling device to go 1,000 years into the past, what he'd bring ("Pepsi and my laptop. I know there no electricity in the past. I invent it.") and all of the strange, strange creatures he might happen to run into. 

I mean, that story alone would be fodder enough for an anecdote, but would you believe it? There's more. 

Every instructor is required to teach two classes of standard curriculum instruction, for four hours a day. In addition, we must teach or participate in one to two hours of extra instruction a week, called a "module." Modules can be about pretty much anything the instructor wants. Some instructors have a "lunch module," where students go out to lunch at different restaurants around town. Others teach a "sports and fitness" module, which basically boils down to going to all of the basketball and football games in the area and requires very little actual physical exertion. This term I'm teaching a module on the history of Western music. I'm starting with the old fogey composers and hopefully by the end of the semester we'll be talking about the 'Stones and Lady Gaga. 

Today was the first session of my module. I almost scrapped it because no one showed up at the proper time (Arab students -- almost always late!) but we started cooking about ten minutes after the scheduled start time. I'd prepared a PowerPoint presentation with some questions -- What do you like to listen to? Why do you listen to music? -- just to get them talking. We got on the subject of types of music and so I asked them how many they could name off the top of their heads. Then I put up this list:

I asked them if there were any types of music on this list that surprised them, or with which they were unfamiliar. I commented that I, myself, was unfamiliar with what "House" music sounded like. My imaginative student raised his hand and confidently informed me that "House" music was a kind of music that happened when a few guys get together in somebody's kitchen or bathroom and play music. When somebody asked for an explanation of R 'n' B, the same student informed the class that it was a type of music played by three people named Ryan, Nancy, and Brian -- "R N B." 

Now, of course there's a danger that this kind of frequent participation can actually become distracting to the other students, and I hope that I am able to make the distinction between "funny" and "might become a problem." But for now? I'm enjoying their creativity and contributions to class. 

My first week of teaching is in the bag! It was crazy -- at times confusing, at others absolutely insane -- and I am pretty exhausted by the end of every day. But I have to say: being there in front of those students, helping them, teaching them something that is personally important to me and which I know will assist them as they go on to other things in their lives -- that really makes all the long days worth it.

There will be a longer, more salient entry later. For now? Pictures!

This is my office. Well, desk. Corner. 90 degree angle. The window looks out on a great view of the ISU campus, which I am sure I will come to appreciate when it is no longer eight degrees outside. The Japanese silk screen and the photos came with the desk. I feel kind of weird about taking them down. Also, I think the plant on the window sill is carnivorous. 

This is my classroom. It is down the hall from my office, which makes the 15-minute passing period between RW and CS a non-issue. The size of the room is not ideal -- especially for CS class, when I would like to have move activities where students move around -- but it has heat and a white board. Newbies can't be picky, anyway.

This is an alligator I drew in class today when we were talking about reasons not to go swimming in the Amazon River. Although, he looks kind of friendly. Maybe I should have drawn him a little more ferocious. I do not want to be on the receiving end of a wrongful limb-eating lawsuit.

What a busy few days!

There was no entry on Friday, mostly because I was juggling a final day of diagnostic testing at work and the fact that I was packing up all my worldly possessions to get ready to move into a new apartment on Saturday. Todd came down with my parents (and with more of my furniture-related worldly possessions) and, for the most part, everything went pretty smoothly on move-in day. My parents even opted to take me grocery shopping so I'd have a full fridge. I'm extremely grateful for all the help they provided. This transition would not have gone nearly as well as it did without their support.

I spent the rest of the weekend and the MLK holiday setting things up and lesson planning for my first week. I know there are two schools of thought on lesson planning: some people like the structure and some people don't. Some people write extensive minute-by-minute outlines of what they plan to do every day; others come up with their ideas five minutes before class. I fall somewhere in between. I like to have some structure, but at the same time I recognize that class time is often organic, and there will be times when it's best to let the class take control of the time if they're making valuable off-track contributions. For the first week, at least, I figured it would be a good idea if I made a rough outline of what I was going to do for both classes. I spent most of the evening paging through textbooks, finding activities online, and racking my brain for warm-up activities that would be time and level-appropriate.

I'll be honest: I was nervous going in today. We split up the larger class into two smaller classes, so today was my first day with my core students. I have about ten students in RW and CS, respectively. RW was kind of a scramble at the beginning. I had planned to have copies of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech for students to read through for vocabulary, but when I got to the office the computer lab was shut and locked. I thought, "Oh no! What am I going to do? I can't have them do reading work if they can't actually read the thing!" Luckily, one of my students had printed out a copy at home so I played the beginning part of the speech on my computer and had them listen while I made copies. For homework they have to look over the speech and identify 7-10 vocabulary words with which they are unfamiliar, then define them and bring them to class. There's a lot of terrific language in that speech. Plus, I wanted to get them comfortable with using the Longman dictionary. I also hope to use that vocabulary as sort of a springboard into looking for definition through context clues.

CS was a little easier, by virtue of it being a communications class -- there were plenty of opportunities for students to speak up in class. We opened with "Two Truths & A Lie" -- an icebreaker game that I have used in other classes. Students are given three to five minutes to come up with three statements about themselves, two of which are true. One is a lie, and it is the job of the rest of the class to determine which is which. Most of the time the statements are pretty innocuous -- "I have two brothers," "I like swimming" -- but sometimes you'll get some pretty creative answers.

Tonight I've got to put together a BINGO game for my CS class based on some statements they submitted during an in-class activity. I had them write two statements about themselves that they would not mind sharing with the rest of the class. I am going to write those statements in a 3x3 grid (without their names attached) and have them spend the first half hour of class milling around the room, figuring out which students belong to which statements. I've never tried this activity before, so fingers crossed that it doesn't bomb. I think it will be good to get students in the mindset of asking "Wh-" questions. That's as good a place as any to start.

Great day today!

It was the official first day of classes. Everyone gathered in one room for announcements and to recognize the new arrivals. I've been told that we effectively doubled our program size from last semester -- there are about forty new students enrolled for Spring Term 2011. This puts a bit of strain on teachers (who have to assess students individually and then fit them into the levels appropriate to their language proficiency), but it also means that the program is getting noticed and (we hope) receiving positive endorsements from former students.

My first class was RW (Reading/Writing). I am teaching a Level 2 class, which means that the students have some ability to read/write contextualized texts and essays, but may not be ready to move into full-blown research paper writing. Many students placed into Level 2. We had about twenty-two overall, which means that the class will likely split into two sections. I will teach one section of 11 students and my mentor teacher will teach the other. I have a good feeling about the RW class. Aside from a few exceptions, they seem to be engaged and eager to learn. I hope I'm able to sustain that momentum over the remaining eight full weeks of classtime. My mentor teacher and I will teach individual sections of the same class, but we will essentially use the same materials. I hope to be able to develop my own take on the books, lessons and activities slated for this level. (Putting that stuff together is how I imagine I will be spending much of this weekend after the move-in.)

My CS (Communication Skills) class is tougher to get a bead on. It's big, too (about twenty students) and will likely split into two sections. We pretty much just did an icebreaking activity this morning: students drew the outline of a t-shirt onto sheets of colored paper and were then instructed to write certain things about themselves on the sleeves, hem and neck. We then divided the students into two groups and had them go around, introducing themselves via their drawings. It was a cool activity, and one that I might modify and use in future classes. Most of the students seem eager to speak; I have found that the Arabic men are quite often verbose and tend to dominate the conversation, whereas students from China or Korea tend to be more reserved unless addressed directly. I am going to have to find a way to keep a balance between those students who want to talk often and those who don't.

After class everyone hiked over to the Methodist church on campus for a 'Welcome to the Program' party. INTERLINK catered Chinese food from a local place and we sat around in groups talking about the semester and playing word-centric games. The thing I really like about INTERLINK is that they are so student-focused. I know that sounds obvious, but the level of attention and care about each individual student demonstrated by the faculty and staff of INTERLINK is far and above anything that I have witnessed at any other language institution. Instructors are genuinely invested in their students; they seem to want to do everything they can to help their classes succeed. That doesn't mean that students can simply skate by on good intentions -- I even found myself being more firm than usual with a few students who must have thought they could take advantage of me because I am new. I figure that it's a good idea to set those parameters now, rather than wait until the end of the term when they're used to having things a certain way. That's what I was taught in graduate school: establish authority early because you can always loosen up later -- it's almost impossible to do the reverse.

All the instructors went back to the office after the party to finish up planning for tomorrow. I put together syllabi for both of my classes, got all of my payroll information in order, and helped my mentor teacher grade some in-class writing diagnostics. I am in good spirits and really think that this job is a terrific fit for me. I look forward to going in every morning. I don't know many people who can say that about their jobs.

Also, FYI: Tonight I put my backpack on the passenger seat of my car when I was driving home. It set off the FASTEN SEATBELT alarm. My backpack weighs as much as a small child. Yeesh.

I found an apartment! It was actually one of the complexes I looked at on Monday but initially wrote off as being out of my price range. I saw a couple of other apartments yesterday that were more expensive but offered fewer amenities or too much extra space, and made a sort of gut decision about the first place. It is easily $100 less than my projected budget for rent, offers the perfect amount of floor space, and is located in a very nice area. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is apparently right down the road, and the complex is within easy distance of a number of jogging/bike trails and shopping. It's not as close to campus as I would have liked (I had this idyllic fantasy of riding my bike everywhere, whizzing down sidestreets while some cheery, busy theme by Thomas Newman provided the soundtrack), but it is not an unreasonable drive either. I move in on Saturday. Todd and my parents are coming down to move the heavier things (and to bring me my glasses, which I stupidly left at the apartment in Valpo) and to help me start nesting.

This afternoon I took care of renter's insurance, as well as the water and electric accounts. I feel very responsible. This whole experience has taught me that I am capable of doing so many things I never thought possible. Not that setting up a water/sewage account is any great feat, but I've never had to take full responsibility for something like that before. Most of the time I'd just ask Todd to take care of it for me, then write the check when the bill turned up in the mail. But now I'm responsible for myself. Getting out there -- feeling capable -- and asking the right questions really makes me invested in this transition process.

I had a great day at work today, too. We start classes tomorrow and I will be paired with a "mentor teacher" until Tuesday of next week, when I will take control of two classes of my own. I am nervous, but also incredibly excited. There is so much potential here. It will be a lot of work and I am sure that not all of it will go according to plan, but I am working with a great group of people and -- more importantly -- in a profession I love.

The rest will fall into place.

Let's take a minute to talk about food.

Specifically, what do you eat when you're living in a hotel room and money is tight? The answer is, well, pretty much anything you can get your hands on. I came to town last week and did the Chinese take-away thing; I cringe to admit it, but I even did fast food a couple of times. The fact is, while you're living without a permanent address you're going to have to make some sacrifices in the food snobbery department.

1. Does your hotel room have a microwave?
Use it. It's not an extra alarm clock with a door. The microwave is your ticket to a fast, tasty meal. Grocery stores sell single-serving soups, pastas and stews that can be heated while you flip around through the room's basic cable channels.

2. Economize.
Buy a box of your favourite chips or snack crackers, but also throw a box of plastic snack bags into your cart. Portion out chips/crackers into the bags and put one in your bag for when you get an on-the-road craving. You'll still have the box when you get back to your hotel room.

3. Get your coffee fix in the room.
Most hotels provide single-serving coffee packets in-room, along with a coffee maker. If you're really jonesin', ask the front desk (nicely) if you can have an extra packet. They're usually pretty cool about it.

4. When in doubt, peanut butter.
A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread will run you no more than $5 (if you're not picky about bread or peanut butter, that is). Perfect for lunch or, if you're particularly peckish at dinner, make two. Many hotels have plastic cutlery that they set out for continental breakfasts in the morning; grab a couple of knives for spreading.

Above all, make sure you eat something during the day, at least twice. It's easy to forget to eat when you're running a million miles an hour, trying to get things done. Living out of a hotel room limits your dining options, but there's no reason to starve for convenience.

Short entry today, as it's getting late and I've got to bunk down (bunk up? bunk sideways? I've never really understood that expression) for the night. High anxiety time, for sure. I got in about 1:30 this afternoon, having packed most of my worldly possessions into the back of my car last night and this morning. Todd and I did a quick goodbye. It was strange; I don't think either of us wanted to linger too much on what was happening -- if we did, it might hurt too much -- and so I dropped into my car about 9:00 this morning and did not look back.

I got into town and went immediately to campus. I'm still fuzzy on parking, but there was a visitors' lot open, so I parked there and hoofed it about a half mile to my building. Most of the students had either gone home for the day or were in their second tier of testing, so it was pretty quiet around the office. A few of my co-workers were in the conference room, scoring reading and writing assessments. I got to sit in -- even contribute an opinion or two -- and grade a handful of exams. Sitting there, red pen in hand, listening to the big bells toll the hour outside I got a real sense of rightness. Or, at least the beginnings of it. I could get used to grading exams, seeing students, taking lunch in the quad when the weather turns nice. I don't know what it was about those bells and those exams, but it was the first time since getting here that I felt like I might fit in after all.

We wrapped exams and there didn't seem like there was too much more to do, so I cut out early and went to look at a couple of apartments. The first place I went to didn't give off the best vibe -- even though I'd called ahead of time to let the office person know I was going to be arriving, she still made me wait twenty minutes while she fussed with some paperwork. And then, when I asked her about security in the complex -- I'm a twenty-something female living on my own, after all -- she gave a kind of evasive answer, like "if you're worried about it, call the police and ask where they do the most patrolling." It just didn't seem right. Not that I was expecting a rose petal parade and a statue made of chocolate or anything. But a little common courtesy goes a long way, especially if I'm going to be feeding you a monthly check. It was twenty 'til five when I got out of there and, on a whim, I called another apartment complex in the area to see if they were showing any one-bedrooms. The lady said she had one, but that I had to make it there in the next five minutes because they're only allowed to show apartments up until twenty to five (because the apartments will turn into pumpkins at five o'clock, apparently). I zoomed over there, made it just in time, and got a tour of a much nicer place by a much nicer office coordinator. The rent/deposit was far more expensive than the first place, though, and I put in an application (and $30 application fee) without making a commitment.

Exhausted, I finally checked into my hotel room (nicer than the Days Inn, but still a little shady) and did a little Internet research to see if there were any rental properties in the area. I got a bite and spent a good three hours following it up before seeing it fizzle out. I called my parents, then called Todd, venting to each respectively. After all that, I'm back where I started this morning. I told you: high anxiety. However, I've got at least four more prospects to call in the next few days; one of them is bound to have something that's right for me.

In the meantime, I need to stop fixating on the whole living situation and focus on what matters: doing my job, getting to know my students, and making sure that my employers don't ever get a second chance to regret hiring me.

I don't know how my "short" entry ended up being this long. It's definitely bedtime.

Let's take a minute to talk about hotel rooms.

After my phone interview on Wednesday, it seemed like a good idea to get the jump on things. Naturally, going down to Terre Haute to participate in a faculty workshop was an ideal situation: I'd get to know my future colleagues, get up to speed on policy, and have a chance to check out the town. Now, I've stayed in plenty of hotels, but never reserved a room for myself before. I wasn't quite sure what to look for. But I can tell you this now -- going for the cheapest online rate does not necessarily land you a suite at the Plaza. I arrived in Terre Haute after dark. (There is a lot of neon in that town.) I made it to the Days Inn, a stone's throw from the major highway and composed of two squat yellow buildings that reminded me of some government dormitories I'd seen in a documentary about North Korea.

I'd called earlier in the day to make a reservation but had a hell of a time finding the front office. I did, however, stumble onto the fitness center, which was not so much a fitness center as it was a room with a weight bench and a length of dirty rope that, I assumed, served some athletic function (or maybe it was just there to make sure that nobody stole the weight bench). I finally found the front office. The desk clerk ran my credit card with one hand while holding his place in an issue of American Handgunner (this month's special article: "How to make your own home-made hollow points") with the other. I got my keycard and tromped over to my room.

Have you ever seen that movie, Tape, with Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard? Three old high school friends reunite in a Lansing, MI hotel room -- Uma Thurman's in it, too, looking paradoxically wan and uptight at the same time -- and it's just the three of them going in and out of the room, engaging in a series of cyclical arguments. My hotel room at the Days Inn was a dead ringer for the movie location, from the mismatched carpet and bedspread to the emphysematous radiator in the corner. I went to plug in my phone and the faceplate for the electrical outlet fell off. But, hey, the place had free WiFi and a reasonable number of cable channels, so I settled in as best I could.

I was not prepared for the feelings of loneliness and isolation that came with staying on my own, so far away from home. Contact through Facebook and the Internet is only so much; when you power everything down, it's just you, the dark and the sighing radiator. I don't think I slept more than four hours that night. I went to bed exhausted, but I couldn't get myself to relax. I could feel my heart thudding through my chest and into the mattress. I heard the people in the room next to me drawing a bath; I heard the rumble of trucks out on the interstate. I felt very alone. I started to question whether or not I had made the right decision in coming down here. I had jumped into everything so fast, so completely, that I hadn't really had time to rationalize what I was doing. What if I hated it? What if I couldn't find my way around town? What if my co-workers didn't like me? Where was I going to live? What if I had been fooling myself, thinking I was good enough to be a teacher? What did I really know about language?

I finally knocked out at around two in the morning. When I woke up, the anxieties were still there, but I was also excited about what was to come. I knew that I had come this far and, realistically, if I got in there and didn't like it, I could always politely decline the offer and come home. Of course, I didn't decline. I accepted. I took a leap. And I'm not saying that it's going to be easy, or always fun, or even remotely perfect -- but I'm proud of myself for doing it. If you never try, you never know what you're capable of, or where you're meant to be. I believe I'm on my way.

And at least I know I don't have to spend another night in a Days Inn to get there.

"Things just seem to happen to you, Katie. And they always happen very quickly."

My dad said this to me on Wednesday night, less than twenty-four hours after I had submitted the first round of professional resumes to any and all academic institutions in the area. I had a job twenty-four hours after that.

Talk about "quick."

I graduated with a Master's degree in December and, after the commensurate two-week lull between Christmas and the New Year, I knew I had to step up my search for gainful employment if I wanted to justify having gone after the degree in the first place. I knew I wanted to teach and that, specifically, I wanted to teach English as a second language. (I stumbled into the TESOL program as a graduate student and, amazingly, it became the subject I was most excited about during my studies.) There weren't a lot of postings for ESL instructors in the area so, on a whim (well, it was probably more than a whim), I submitted my resume to a university in West Central Indiana. I really didn't think anything would come from it. I thought, at best, they'd take a look at my resume, see that I was a recent graduate, and tell me to reapply after I'd had more field experience. Forget the fact that the posting was in Terre Haute -- where the hell was Terre Haute? -- and that I already had a very nice apartment (and boyfriend) right here. Who would want to give up all of that safety for something that might not pan out?


I had a phone interview the next day. Twenty-four hours after that I was on the road to Terre Haute -- "the undiscovered country"-- and a teaching post that, last week, was non-existent.

Excuse me, ma'am, I believe you ordered the hat sandwich?

"Later, you learn courage in different situations; the first time onstage, when you wish you had never agreed to do it, you curse your pretensions and lament your ego, and want only to go back into the corner. But somehow you don't; you step out. . . . Each step is fearful, yet each refusal means not only remorse at an opportunity missed, but, worse, despising yourself for not even summoning up the courage to try.

Sometimes I marveled at the way I did indeed step forward, but more often I was always aware of the constant struggle to make the choice to do so. For it is a choice. The alternative option always beckons and does so adorned with good arguments: it's not a propitious moment; it is a risk too far; others are against it; there will always be another moment. Often there isn't, however, and in any event, deep down you know the reason: the fear of being out there, exposed, prone to fail. If you never try to succeed, you will never have to fail. So why do it?"


This blog follows the daily ups, downs and choices of a transplanted English teacher living in Indiana.

If you're very lucky, you may avoid the grammar lesson.