Cutting It Close

It's been one of the most stressful weeks of my life -- juggling work, teaching, and now -- applying for an "official" teaching job.

There's a computer-slash-social studies teaching opening in Arlington, a small town which is just 15 miles away from where I live. Not too shabby! But I didn't find out about this job until late last week and everything, like my resume, a letter of application, academics course list, and the rest of my credential file needed to be in the superintendent's hands by tomorrow.

Let me tell you what kind of chore that was, running all over the place this week and having people write up references for me. I needed three of them -- two of them were easy to give to and they at least got them in a couple of days ago, but the third ...

The third went to my human resource supervisor at work. I gave it to her on Monday -- her excuse "I don't have time to do it right now, with meetings and stuff on Tuesday, etc." I explained that I didn't need it until Wednesday, so I could have enough time to mail and have it in Arlington by Friday. Yesterday, she comes up to me at work and explains once again: "Tony, I'm sorry, I thought it was Tuesday today and it's been a shitty week ... I didn't get it done."

Deep down, I was pissed. A little selfish on my part, but filling out a reference sheet does not take no more than 10 minutes. I doubt that she was busy at all; she just didn't want to do it. I think I torqued her off a while back when I said I couldn't wait to look for a "real" job.

Back to the conversation yesterday -- she seems to turn things around and tries to place the blame on me for getting her the reference sheet to her too late. Apparently, she wasn't listening before, because I had explained on Monday when I first gave her the sheet, I had just found out about the job the previous Thursday/Friday. But she had a solution -- she would get it done first thing on Thursday morning and personally deliever it to the Career Services center at college.

So after she left and told me all about her "problems," I just sat there and steamed a little while, stressing out some more about how I'm going to get this crap all together.

This morning, I sent out e-mail after e-mail to the Career Services center at college, one to my student teaching supervisor, and others just to make sure my file was in order for it to mail today. I got all my confirmations this morning that all was well -- now I just have my fingers crossed for a phone call from Arlington requesting an interview.

As I look at it, this is pretty much a "dream job" right now -- it's close to home, Katie can finally go to school, and I'm finally going to be doing something worthwhile that I can apply my college degree to. All I need to do now, is pass the Principles of Learning and Teaching (PLT) test and I'm all set.