Qualifications

I have been filling out applications for teaching, then, per their request, attaching a resume that says  everything in the application.

I keep it professional for the most part, but in one particularly detailed application today, I was nearly to the final step when the form gave me an opening with some question like, "Is there anything else we should consider in the hiring process that this form has failed to ask about?"

There are so many other talents. Where do I even begin? I can do a plethora of things as a result of my former, less relevant job experience.

I can...

• stuff a cannoli
• crack two eggs at once
• haggle for a rug in a souk
• wrap gifts very neatly, including curling the ribbon
• count letters in words very quickly
• count money in a cash drawer or a safe very quickly
• alphabetize all the letters in a word (e.g. Carolyn --> aclnory)
• say words backwards
• drive stick shift
• backfloat very well
• pick out glasses that look great on your face
• call your insurance company about your benefits
• follow you around a corn maze if I think you're drunk
• spin cotton candy
• fry Oreos
• whip up pancake batter
• lead any of several get-to-know-you games
• clean a bathroom in 35 seconds or less
• sense when someone is talking about me in another language
• curse in Mandarin, Arabic, French, and Spanish
• tell you where any item belongs in the Waynesboro Kmart in summer 2007
• recite all verses of the "Found a Peanut" song, including alternate endings
• make a lox and cream cheese bagel to die for
• make an espresso using a standard machine
• memorize specials

And cats like me.

Recitation

Assignment: Memorize and recite 20 lines of a poem; use appropriate pace, tone, gestures; connect with your audience. You have one week, ready, Go!

As I assigned it, I knew I would be terrified if I were they, so I decided to do it myself. Always model what you want your students to do and be.

I stood in front of the class as if it were the first day I had ever stood in front of a class instead of the 3,000th. My hands shook, and my voice caught in my throat. I was momentarily Anne Shirley when she stood before all of her friends of Avonlea at the White Sands Hotel, prepared to recite "The Highwayman," while being seized with fear.

It's still a fresh feeling, the muscles and everything in me saying that it is a bad idea to speak words not my own. Then, to speak with spark is even more impossible. What evolutionary trait resulted in this fear? What am I preserving when I fear performance?

But then I began. Why was my voice suddenly so small? It was a hollow, tin whisper at the bottom of a well. I tried to draw myself up, speak from the diaphragm, banish signs of fear. All of that is rather a lot to do at once.

I recited Emily Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death" to a group of 11th-graders. I knew the poem cold, and still I floundered. It almost undid me. I continued to shake for minutes afterward, still teaching. I have no idea what it is about reciting something I have memorized. When my students ask me why I am not an actor, I know that this is why. 

I Will Watch That Movie If

• "Ragtag" is somewhere in the description.
• Shah Rukh Khan, Will Smith, or any of the Wayans brothers,  is in it.
• It's based on a Jane Austen book.
• Someone must learn to dance.
• One or more characters undergo a montage transformation.
• Someone must go from poor to rich or from rich to poor. (They must "Trade Places," if you will.)
• I can immediately tell that there will be a happy ending.
• There is a heist.
• "...must learn that, in life, things don't always go as planned" is in the trailer.
• A remarkable child is the narrator.
• Morgan Freeman is the narrator.
• Tom Hanks and/or Meg Ryan are in it. Who am I kidding? It's Tom Hanks *and* Meg Ryan.
• Tina Fey and/or Amy Poehler did anything with it, to it, or near it.

Status: Doing All Right

It's the end of a quarter, so naturally I feel that I should be grading instead of writing this, but I'm taking a moment to evaluate my emotional state since mid-winter. I find that I took no time to slide down off of one sad farewell before leaping to another potential relationship. The pain was compounded. Maybe that's the problem with rebound relationships: you're not ready to approach the risk with a clear head; you aren't thinking about the risk, just thinking of feeling better. If and when the fall comes, it takes you by surprise because this was supposed to be your feel-good relationship, so how can it make you feel so bad?

After a month of attempts to install the Windows 10 update, I asked for help. It seemed the update had not installed after numerous attempts, but lo, and behold! thank the Lord above!, I have the beautiful privilege of using my computer. It is working for the moment, but another update could crash it. Anything could crash it. I have a new least-favorite brand, and they don't have a support center in Northern Africa, and they don't do refunds.

The job search has been a distant but real part of my daily stress. It has been the chord in a tug-of-war between trusting God and trying to be diligent, feeling like I'm not doing enough.

It seems like a lot to do, I mean... I've gotta move countries again. Gotta find a place to live when I find a job. A place that has a kitchen where everyone can hang out, living room be damned, if I have to choose.

I hesitated to write about this, because what if it sounds like whining, especially when I know that I did this to myself. It looks awfully masochistic, doesn't it? I knew this would be challenge upon challenge. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Very often it's the opposite, as you well know.