I finally heard from my high school. I didn’t get the job.
I have to tell my district that I’m leaving by the end of the month (or I break next year’s contract and they can take action against me for that), which is when I leave for Ecuador anyway, so that was my final opportunity to find a new job for next year. I’ll have to wait until next spring to start again.
I have A LOT of work to do this coming year to make myself a more competitive candidate. I hope it helps.
Well, we got through it. Last week, and this weekend, were super intense, but they are over and I’m so glad.
All week I had to, quite literally, run to my car after work to get to summer camp pick up in time. I was picking up my daughter and her friend all week, and watching the friend from 3:30 until 5:30 or 6pm (her mom was doing drop off, which was immensely helpful for us). My son was sick with a cold and pink eye so we had to cobble coverage for him through Thursday. My daughter’s birthday was Wednesday, and both sets of grandparents came over to hep us celebrate. Thursday my daughter’s summer camp had a show. Friday afternoon I was getting ready for Saturday’s birthday party.
All week I was manically grading tests and inputting scores. Oh, and packing my entire room up while my students watched a Spanish movie.
The packing up of my room really bummed me out.
And I never heard from my high school about the job.
But the worst thing last week was learning that my best friend at work’s husband has cancer. His prognosis isn’t good. She is a breast cancer survivor so they know what they are getting into. They are both in their 40’s. Their daughter is in 6th grade.
Definitely put my own stresses into perspective. And made me really, really sad.
Saturday we took six 7-year-olds (and our 3.5-year-old son) to the local amusement park. My parents came, and two of the moms. It was a ton of fun, but totally exhausting. Still, I’m glad we did it. The girls loved it and the parents were thrilled that their daughters had such a great time. It was most of the first time there for most of them. My daughter’s 7th birthday party was a huge success.
Sunday my daughter’s good friend had her birthday party, so we were all back together again for a long celebration. I’m so glad birthday weekend is over.
This week I have to get my room entirely packed by 3pm on Thursday. I’m not quite sure what will happen if it’s not ready at that time (my principal hasn’t really been around to ask). I am reminded of that time in my senior year of college, when I was pulling an all nighter and realized at 7am that I would write for the next three hours and my paper still wouldn’t be done at 10am when it was due. I distinctly remember sprinting onto campus at 11am and handing my paper over to my professor as the class walked out. “This was due an hour ago,” she informed me. “I know, but it wasn’t done then,” was all I could manage as I gasped for breath. I told her I understood if she wouldn’t accept it, and was so relieved a week later when I checked my grades and realized she had.
Wednesday is our last day with the kids. Thursday will be the final push to be packed. And then… summer.
And maybe, at some point this week, my high school will have the decency to formally let me know I didn’t get that job.
{So… yesterday’s post was supposed to go up today (Thursday) and this post was supposed to go up yesterday (Wednesday) but sometimes you don’t change the schedule date to the next day before “scheduling” and end up just posting something right then and you can’t undo it once it’s done.}
My daughter turned seven yesterday. Seven.
It feels like a really big number, and not just because it’s my lucky number.
I think it seems old because seven if the first year of my life that I really remember. My sister was born and we moved to Hong Kong. I can reach back and see things at seven. Before that it’s kind of all a blur.
I don’t know if my daughter will be the same, but even if she doesn’t remember more about this year of her life than the ones before, I can’t deny how much more grown up she seems.
I’m excited for her.
I’m excited for us both.
This week has been… difficult for me. It seems that I am not nearly as accepting of uncertainty as I want to be. Not shocking but still disappointing.
It’s not that I’m disappointed in myself, or think I should be able to manage the week after an interview better. It’s more that I’m upset to realize that when I apply for new jobs in the future, I will struggle so much in the days and weeks before I know the final answer. It’s just a shitty way to live life and I wish I could handle it better.
The experience, especially the counting down, transported me back to my TTC days. God, those two-week waits were the fucking worst. I found my thoughts cycling through very familiar patterns of pure, unbridled hope to cautious optimism, to crippling dread, to stomach-churning anxiety, to dark depression and then back again. When I got the email from the other school, detailing why I wasn’t being considered, it was like a cycle when I’d missed the best days to have sex and was sure it wasn’t going to work. When I realized the school hadn’t contacted any of my references (despite talking with me about them for a long time at the end of the interview, and assuring me they’d be contacting them soon) it was a cycle with absolutely no symptoms, no sore breasts, no fatigue, nothing.
And tomorrow my “period is due.” They are supposed to let me know if I got it or not.
Of course they might not. Just like periods can be a day or two late even when you’re not pregnant, I might bite my nails all day for nothing. I hate being out of control.
And there are feelings of self-worth on the line. Is this my last chance to get a job? No. Just like I never had to endure a final attempt at getting pregnant, I know I can always try again. (Of course, I’ll have to wait a year to do that, which does up the stakes a little.) Failing to get pregnant always felt like failing at some basic human process, the result of which all my friends managed without issue. Failing to be offered a job feels like a similar failure that so many friends haven’t had to face. Last year 13 staff members left, five of them to go on to high schools. Why can they do what I can’t? What is wrong with me?
Being thrust back into a week of waiting reminds me how grateful I am to be past the TTC era of my life. I always vaguely remember what a complete basket case I was during that time, but I haven’t felt that kind of batshit crazy in years. Lordy, am I glad I don’t have to play this game every month anymore.
Recognizing the parallels between this experience and TTC, also reminded me of some of the lessons I wish I had learned before trying to start a family. I thought parenthood would make my life perfect, but it has been very challenging for me to adjust to life as a mother. Motherhood was not the panacea I expected, and I have wished many times I could have known that during my struggles. I’m employing the lesson now to remind myself that even if I do get the job, my day to day life won’t necessarily be “better.” Especially not at first. Working at a high school is a goal I have for a lot of reasons, but it will not, in and of itself, make me like teaching more than I do now. It’s a goal that I can still pursue in the future, and in the meantime I can make a lot of choices that improve my quality of life without that change.
Honestly, there are times I think about next year and wonder if I really will be happier at a new job. I get just as anxious assuming I will get the job as I do assuming I won’t.
Mostly I’m worried I won’t get it because it will be another professional rejection, this time from a place where I have some history and even a (albeit weak) connection. There is also this idea that if I don’t get this, I’ll be less likely to get something in the future. Like this rejection will foretell future rejections (this was also how I felt when I was trying to get pregnant, every negative was further proof that it was never going to happen).
Of course, that is not necessarily the case. I have a solid plan to make myself a more compelling candidate next year. Just because I don’t get this job, doesn’t mean I can’t get something in the future.
The reality is, with such a specific position, in such a small area (I think there are only 7 high schools that fall in the area I am able to consider for salary and commute reasons), I may have to be ready to play the long game. I’m only on my second year of applying, and in many ways it was my first, as I only applied to two jobs at the end of last year and neither was really accepting applicants (both ended up being in-district transfers). I need to be patient, and ready to keep improving until I am the teacher high schools want me to be.
Next year I will be okay, not matter what the outcome. And I do know that. I just wish I could tap into whatever fuels my latent anxiety so I can stop feeling nauseous all the time.
Hopefully tomorrow I will no either way, I can move forward with a little more certainty about what next year will look like.
Also, only one more week of school!
I have never been very good at writing here when things are going well. I’m just not quite sure what to say. I’m not the biggest fan of my own posts about how awesome everything is. I either find them kind of boring (or at least not very compelling) or toeing humblebrag (if they aren’t knee deep in it). I don’t do them well; they are not my most interesting posts.
I have always come to this place to exorcise my demons. But then I got called out on that, more than once, and so I’ve tried to temper pretty much everything I write. I suppose that is growing up. One might even call it perspective.
I read the blogs of a lot of women, extraordinary women, who are wading through incredibly difficult lives. Their problems are real, with a capital P. Their shit is legit. These women have to navigate divorce, marital affairs, chronic illness, resolving IF and loss childfree/less, stillbirth, infant death, children with severe health issues. These are really intense, life-altering issues. These women write eloquently about their situations, putting up posts that teach me what resilience really means, what it looks like in the day to day.
After reading posts like that, I am loathe to come here and write a post about how I can’t find another job, even though I have a fine one that pays the bills, where I’m treated fairly and with respect (at least by my colleagues and direct superiors). I am weary to publish something about my marital issues, or my own personal challenges in parenting my kids, because it all feels so…pedestrian.
Yes, these issues are relateable. Yes people see themselves in my struggles. It’s not that I think there is no place for posts like mine in the world, I just doubt mine are insightful enough to do those universal topics justice. I don’t have a thoughtful lesson to tie it all up with in the end.
What I am learning about myself is that I’m not all the resilient. I mean, I knew that, but it’s humbling to be shown evidence of it over and over again. My thought process tend toward anxiety and depression, I am not someone who bounces back from adversity, stronger than before. Instead I have learned a fraction of the lesson, so that the next time I am slightly better prepared. And yet I keep making the same mistakes. I keep stumbling over the same cracks in the sidewalk, instead of stepping over them the next time I walk down that particular block.
I never managed to get the job stuff out of my head this weekend. It was infuriating, because I really and truly do not think I’m going to get the job. One of the schools that never contacted me for an interview, even though they extended their application deadline indicating they hadn’t found a suitable candidate, finally responded to my confirmation email (because I sent it again). Evidently I am not being considered because they want someone with high school experience. I hadn’t even remembered that not having high school experience was a weakness of mine. I was so focused on not being a native speaker than I forgot my real fault was being a middle school teacher.
They are interviewing five people for the position at my high school. Surely someone has high school experience, or is a native speaker, or both. And yes I know, in the workplace people can hire applicants for any number of reasons, but in education, people generally hire people for a narrow range of skills and experience.
And of course teachers right out of school get hired. It does happen. But high school Spanish positions are not as plentiful, and in California a lot of people speak Spanish.
I mean, if I could move to another state and apply to Spanish positions I’d probably have a lot better chance of finding one than I would here.
Or if I were able to work part time for a year or two, and then be in a position to request a full time position when one opened up. Except I’m not in that position, and I never will be.
So I really and truly do not think I’m going to get this position. And yet I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve tried every strategy I know of, but the thoughts just keep popping back into my head. And even though I know, deep in my heart, that I will be okay next year at my current school, I can’t seem to avoid the stress. In fact, if I start thinking really positively about next year at my school, I start getting stressed that I will be offered the position and won’t know if I should take it!
It’s crazy making!
Sometimes I hate myself so much. I hate the way my brain works. I hate my tendencies to spiral into anxiety and depression. It seems no amount of self-awareness or self-compassion will ever change what actually goes on in my head. I just have to learn to ride out the storms.
And yes, I have gotten better. I my coping skills are more refined, more effective. But I can’t seem to avoid myself, and I suppose I never will have that ability. I am who I am. I need to accept it. To accept me.
I hope as I get older, I chill the fuck out a little.
(I guess I ended up writing that post anyway.)
My husband and I had are first big fight in long time.
I know why it happened. I know what I could have done to prevent it. But I didn’t prevent it, and it happened.
I should be asleep right now. My husband is and he never get up with the kids; the “night parenting” it mine to manage.
But I needed something for myself today. Something that is all my own.
So I’m two cocktails and a second episode into the Handsmaid Tale.
It’s nice to have some time and mental space to myself.
My interview was yesterday morning. I think it went okay. Probably better than the other one. I think the administrator really liked me. I don’t think the Spanish teacher there was very impressed.
They have interviews into next week but hope to let me know by Thursday.
One week.
I’m honestly so exhausted by the whole thing, I don’t have the energy to care much anymore. I don’t think I’m going to get it, and I’m okay with that. It will sting all the more this time, since I have some connections at this school, but I will get over it and move on.
I’m still packing my resources separately from my school’s resources, but otherwise I’m just not going to think about it. I can’t.
My daughter’s birthday is next Wednesday and her party is the following Saturday. I have tons of tests to grade and scores in input at school. There is plenty to distract me, and I’m hoping that by tomorrow or Saturday weekend I’m just not thinking about it anymore.
And honestly, there is a lot I’m looking forward to about my schedule next year. It will be okay either way.
At this point I am just done. My kids are so intense right now. After the three day weekend I was looking forward to going back to work! My 3.5 year old son is especially challenging. My husband and I are both totally overwhelmed with work and other commitments. We are totally spent at the end of each day.
I know it always feels this way at the end of the school year. I know these challenges are not the really hard ones, the ones I read about on other people’s blogs, the ones I hear about in other people’s lives. I know it’s just a few bumps in our otherwise pretty smooth road. I do have that perspective.
I’m just tired. And I want the school year to be over. And I want to know for sure where I’m working next year.
One week. Two weeks. Then this will all be over.
Can I tell you how much I don’t want to be applying for this job right now? It really complicates things.
First off, this application requires a few things my past applications have not. Luckily I have copies of all my transcripts to scan, but I’m not sure when last year’s assistant principal will get around to sending me a finalized copy of the third letter of reference that I need. I wrote a draft of a letter Friday night, in the hopes that she could edit and return it by Tuesday. We’ll see. I still haven’t heard from her.
I also spent an hour on Saturday getting pricked for a TB test that will be read on Monday (yay for random urgent care clinics in my neighborhood!). I have an up-to-date TB screening at work, but I don’t want to ask for it because it will look suspicious (and also will probably take them a week to get it to me).
Acquiring and putting together all of this stuff is not easy, especially when I still have to make a review and test for my 6th graders, grade a ton of papers, AND pack my classroom.
As for packing my classroom, I would be doing a totally different job if I knew for sure I wouldn’t be returning next year. Since I’m not sure how this will play out, I’m keeping my own personal resources separated from the school’s resources. I don’t know if I’ll have to repack my own stuff into my own boxes once I know I’ll need to take them with me. That would suck, but I would understand. If I do get the job, I’m hoping they will let me return the boxes at the beginning of the school year, as my old high school (where I am applying) is literally RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from my current school–we hear their bells ringing, and announcements blaring, all day long–so it wouldn’t be hard to return them.
This job is also not as exciting as the one I interviewed for before. The Spanish program at my old high school does not have a stellar reputation. In the past they have been very strict about how, and from what, teachers were allowed to teach. I might be stuck with a textbook if I get the job, and that would not be good. (This was 12 years ago, so it’s possible the department has changed.)
They also don’t have block schedule days, which I was really looking forward to. The other high school district has two block days a week, and our school will be having them next year. I was really looking forward to teaching with block days, and it’s a bummer that opportunity would disappear.
There are some pros to this job. Their pay schedule is higher than ours (but lower than the other high school district I applied to – though they are about to get a raise). They take 10 years of experience, instead of five, which is awesome. Also, they start at 9am, which means I wouldn’t have to negotiate when my prep falls. That is very good news.
I feel like I have to apply, because I have a bit of an “in” there. My leadership teacher remembers me and really wants me to get the job. He promised to put in a good word for me and I plan to visit him Wednesday, when he’ll hopefully introduce me to the instructional vice-principal. At that point I hope to have my application submitted. (They had a minimum day on Friday so I couldn’t visit him then.)
So it’s not necessarily a job I actually want (specifically), and the timing could not be more stressful, but it’s an opportunity to get my foot in the door at a high school that I can’t pass up. Also, the only reason I know about it is because a colleague’s wife works in the district and mentioned the opening to him, and he remembered I was looking around so he passed the news along to me. I haven’t even been checking the job site anymore because posting this late are rare. I’m definitely a sucker for that whole, “maybe it’s fate,” feeling, even though I don’t really believe in fate. I guess I’m more superstitious than I like to admit.
So yeah, this is inserting a whole lot of stress and uncertainty into an already stressful and uncertain time. I also don’t know how well I will weather more rejection. What if, despite my connections, I don’t even get an interview? What if I get the interview but they don’t ultimately hire me? I feel like it will hurt even more when I have to face my leadership teacher with the news that I didn’t get the job.
The last rejection was really hard for me. I was so unimpressed with my performance during the interview; it took weeks for me to stop berating myself for how horribly I did. These feelings were compounded by discovering that a friend had another friend put in a good word for me, which is probably why I got the interview in the first place. To know that I did a shitty job when someone else’s reputation was on the line was more than I could bare. (And to realize I most certainly wouldn’t have gotten the interview without that recommendation had me spiraling back into feelings of general unworthiness).
The other shitty aspect of this situation is that I was starting to feel pretty positive about next year. Yes, not having a classroom is going to suck, and commuting between schools with so little travel time is very stressful, but I really like the classes I have next year. I find myself disparaging my current job to boost my enthusiasm enough to apply, which I absolutely cannot do since I need to feel good about next year if I am ultimately rejected.
Man, I was so ignorant about job searching; I had no idea how much time and self-confidence it required. I didn’t realize that every failure to get an interview would feel like a rejection of me professionally. I didn’t realize that I would worry about asking others to put in a good word for me, for fear of my own failure reflecting poorly on them. The whole process is a total mindfuck. I really, really dislike it.
I do appreciate that I am in a relatively good place about next year. That will soften the probable blow, which I’m assuming will eventually come. The truth is I don’t expect to be offered the job, but feel I can’t ignore the opportunity–I suppose I’m more weary of regret than rejection. I guess that’s a good thing; I’m still standing on the right side of resignation. I don’t know for how many years that will be the case.
I’ve been putting in long hours trying to stay on top of planning and grading in these final weeks of the school year. On Tuesday I found out I have to have my entire classroom packed the day after school ends. At 3pm that afternoon I will hand over my keys.
I’ve been about two steps away from a total meltdown all week. It hasn’t helped that my kids aren’t sleeping.
Then today I found out my high school – the one I graduated from almost 20 years ago – has a Spanish position opening. The job post went up on Wednesday.
To say it put me into a tail spin would be an understatement. My impossible work load just multiplied exponentially.
Thank god for the three day weekend.
My daughter and I are about to embark on a three-month anti-anxiety program. Will the parenting challenges never end?
Yeah, I know, they don’t.
First it was the constant complaints of stomach aches (which our pediatrician assured me were anxiety related). Then it was the nightmares. And of course there is the sensory processing disorder, which we’ve learned to manage quite well. So I suppose the anxiety was always there, but it didn’t become something I felt we needed to tackle until recently, when she started getting really upset and telling me that she was worried something bad was going to happen. The aftercare staff reported last week that she cried for almost 30 minutes, afraid that something horrible was going to happen to me. Suddenly she didn’t want to go to swimming anymore because she was worried something bad would happen in the water. Around this same time, her fears of zombies and other monsters intensified so much that she could no longer read some of her favorite comics (these comics don’t have zombies in them, but some zombies appear in the ads for other comics throughout the issues–yes we offered to sharpie over the offending pictures, she freaked out even more). She didn’t even like the most recent Bad Guys book because it ended with (very G-rated) zombie kittens.
So yeah, the anxiety is now a thing that is affecting our quality of life on a daily basis. I can’t “hope she’ll grow out of it” any longer.
So of course, I got a book.
{You might be wondering why I’m not turning to a professional, and it’s a fair question. If someone I knew and trusted could recommend a great child and family counselor I would be all over it. But I’ve asked, and nobody does. I’ve done enough therapy to know it’s hard to find someone that’s effective when you’re an adult and know what effective feels like. I don’t have the time, money or energy to search for, and try, different child therapists. And my health insurance only covers/provides group therapy, which at this point I don’t think would be productive. So right now I’m going to try the program laid out in this book. If things don’t get better over the summer, I’ll start the search for a good child therapist.}
The book I got actually looks very good. It lays out a three month program and includes the PDF of a workbook to use for each lesson/activity. As someone who has done a fair amount of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) with professionals, I feel relatively well equipped to work through this with my daughter. She really wants to stop feeling this way, and seems willing to do the program with me. The fact that it will be summer, and we won’t have to work around homework obligations, will definitely help.
I’m especially eager to start because I’m worried she’ll suffer greatly while I’m gone for ten days in Ecuador this summer. Not only is that the longest I’ve ever been away, but it’s the farthest I’ve traveled without my family. At this point I can’t even mention it to someone else without her having a meltdown. She totally refuses to talk to me about it. I leave in five weeks, which doesn’t give us a lot of time to get started, but hopefully by the time I leave she’ll have some tools to help her manager her catastrophic thinking and the panic it induces.
I know parenting is hard, and I know a lot of parents have it harder than me, but man, sometimes I wonder if we can go a year without some new crisis to confront.
Having said that, I realize how lucky we are. Yesterday I walked in on my daughter finishing a chapter book, and I thanked the universe yet again for us learning of her convergence insufficiency so early. I shudder at the thought of how frustrated I would be right now if my daughter, who can listen to audiobooks all day, were refusing to read and not understanding why. Instead she reads at a high second grade level in both Spanish and English. Yes the three months of visual therapy was an incredibly intense parenting challenge, one I hope not to repeat, but I’m so thankful that it exists, and was available, (and that we had the almost $4K to pay for it). The frustration and heartache we saved ourselves would have been far worse.
I’m equally as thankful that there are resources out there for parents with anxious children, that sensory processing disorder is recognized and diagnosable, that there are books, and noise cancelling headphones and chew necklaces and seamless socks you can buy to make it all a little more manageable. That people out there recognize our situation and validate our concerns.
For all of that, I am immensely grateful.
If not a little weary.
I’ll let you know how this journey down the rabbit hole of anxiety management goes.