"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?