On learning from failures

And now for a refreshing change of pace...

I took the GACE for middle grades Social Studies a month ago. Yeah, they make you wait a month for your scores. Anyway, for the past four weeks I have been mentally planning how to approach posting the results of the almost certain failure of a test I had taken. Because my confidence was that high. I settled on a story about how once in my life I turned a massive failure into a learning experience that ultimately helped get me into college, as a way to show that I was staying optimistic about this score and that I would keep trying for my dream job because one day it would really happen...... and then today I got my score back. I passed. I did more than pass -- I actually did very well. But I'm going to tell the story anyway.

I started playing the flute in 7th grade, and since I was switching over from the saxophone I thought I needed to be really good right at the beginning or my parents wouldn't let me play. I had always wanted to be like Lisa Simpson, but the sax was heavy and my flute friends looked so cute with their little instruments that you could pack in your bookbag at a whim and hurry to catch up to someone. I, on the other hand, needed a skateboard to transport my instrument. Sadly nobody gave me one. I turned to my friend Heather, so that she may impart her flutey wisdom unto me. And she did. She just... didn't actually know a whole lot about it either. I'm not saying this to rag on Heather, I'm saying this to paint a picture of me as an entering freshman flute player (side note: Freshmen, as we all know, are notoriously annoying. Flute players, as we might know, are notoriously annoying as well. Imagine, will you, what kind of unholy combination you get from the two. Mr Schnettler, if you're reading this -- I apologize). We're talking notes written in, no knowledge of tuning... I didn't even know that the higher register notes were fingered differently. I thought you just blew harder to go up an octave (Allison, my section leader from 2002, if you're reading this I apologize).

But I learned. I practiced. I stopped writing in my notes and started paying attention to things like tone quality and dynamics, and I learned how to finger the higher octaves. On one of my chair tests that year, I scored higher than most upper-classmen. Of course at this point in time, we all thought it had been a fluke, and I was placed a little lower in the order, but what can you do. In preparation for the All-District Band audition, I learned my major scales and took private lessons with the resident first chair (Well, she was actually second chair, but the first chair was one of those unbeatable "always first chair" types, so we just counted the first after her as "First"). I was one of the only people in my grade who could say I knew my major scales and my 3-octave chromatic scale, even if the lowest note rarely came out (still doesn't).

But I didn't make All-District Band. I wasn't too broken up about it; I knew my sight-reading was dreadful and that the people I had heard warming up in the holding tank for auditioners deserved to be there much more than I did. I had failed, yes. I couldn't change my score. But you know what else I couldn't change? I couldn't un-learn my major scales. I couldn't un-learn my 3-octave chromatic scale. I couldn't take away the knowledge I had gained in my practicing, and I knew that I would only continue to build on that foundation. That was the only year that I didn't make All-District Band.

You may know that I entered college as a music major. While that was clearly not the course my life took in the end...of my college career, that one failed audition set in motion events that led to lifelong friendships and a college where I found my true academic love: creative writing. Side note: Freshman year of high school I wrote a "personal essay" about my audition experience. "Personal essay" is just a public school way of saying "creative nonfiction piece" -- so it could be argued that music led to my end major in more ways than one.

So, while I did not actually fail my GACE, I'm sure I have many more failures ahead of me in life. I don't mean that as negatively as it sounded. There will be more. And I am okay with that, because our failures are valuable learning experiences. And, like the nerd I am, I will never ever stop learning.

There are no words for this.

Ships that don't come in

And so things got complicated...

I don't know where to start. I guess I'll start with Wednesday, when I had the interview. Yeah, a real interview. It started off so disastrously I thought that they would have to cast Tina Fey to play me in a movie. First, I left a little late. Map Quest said it would be an hour and a half, and I left with just enough time, which was stupid I know. Then, my GPS decided that, to get Southwest it would make me go West first, as in through Atlanta, a route that was needlessly complicated and tacked on an extra 10 minutes. Which made me 10 minutes late. Which is never good. After missing two exits, I found the school and made my way to the office to wait. Then I realized that my blazer was covered in hair. Cat hair or fuzzies from my fleece jacket, I didn't know, but the presence of the hair was bad enough. I attempted to scrape off the hair using tape, and hoped that nobody would walk into the office during the preening. Thankfully nobody did.

The interview went well, actually. They showed me around the school, asked lots of questions, and seemed to mostly like what I had to say. I wasn't sure how well things had gone until Monday, when I learned that references were being called. Apparently that's a good thing? So, once my final reference had confirmed that contact had been made, I waited.

And waited.

And now it's been over a week since the interview, 2 days since the last call (I think), and the longer I wait the less likely it feels that it is going to happen. And I sit in someone else's classroom every day and anxiously check my phone for missed calls from unknown numbers only to find several (SEVERAL) calls from Newton County Sub Finder. And I wonder if the kids in whoever's classroom I'm in at the time would really be different if they were mine or I'm just fooling myself. Can I convince an apathetic teenager to give reading a second chance to change their life? Can I help students to see why we shouldn't act for reward or in fear of punishment, but simply because it is right? I want to believe that one day I will be able to make a difference, but I just can't see it happening.

Then I think about my car. Last summer, when my Shadow crapped out on the first day of graduate school classes, I never imagined that I would ever drive a brand new car. I never imagined that there would be a salesman desperate or foolish enough to give someone like me her own set of keys to something so amazing. Me sitting in a new car was not something I could really see, and for the first three months, my heart jumped every time the phone rang. I was convinced someone was calling to say that they had actually realized what they'd done and why on Earth would they have ever given a graduate with barely a job and a mountain of debt her own car? But the call never came. And the car is still mine, and every time I sit in it I remember what it was like that day on the lot when I thought "no way this will ever be mine."

So I imagine that the job thing is going to be something like that. When I got that first offer, the one that was un-offered due to paperwork, I thought "No way this is happening. I'm not ready for this, I'm not good enough, there must be some mistake if they wanted me!" And, as it turned out, nothing actually did happen. But I have to believe that one day something will. This is what I've wanted since I was in second grade and I attempted to teach (force) little Cory down the street to read. I can't let one summer, however disheartening it was, break me.

But it's so frustrating. There is so much that I want to do, and right now I feel like I'm on pause. At the most I make $80 a day, and most days it's more like $65. If things continue like this, we'll be able to keep our heads above water, but we'll be barely scraping by. We can't travel, we can't do anything fun or go anywhere, and even a dinner at Applebee's will be a splurge. And I know it's not my fault but it's hard not to feel guilty about the situation. If I had a job things would be better. We could live anywhere, we could go places, see people who live far away, and have money left to save for that whole "starting our lives" business. Michael could even save for school. But because I can't seem to find something full-time, and the most I can do is pretend to be someone else's teacher and try to convince teenagers that I do know what I'm talking about, we can't do any of that. We can't do anything.

I blame paperwork. If you want to get down to it, I blame my stupid school for not processing my stupid grades. It's hard to convince myself that everything happens for a reason when nothing is happening. Fifty years ago, processing would have been done with a stamp. I would have found "Phil" in his office, slipped him a 20, leaned over his desk, and said "let's see if we can't get this process sped up a bit, hmm?" And bam. Instant success. But now, because the school trusts a computer to do its job, all the grades are processed at once, over several days, in the middle of August. I hate to keep going back to that, but it really is the root of the problem. Although I guess the problems is that I didn't want to be in class straight from August of my senior year until the next, next May. Which is how it would have gone if I'd taken the May class a year earlier, like I could have. And sure, that would have been the best option, if I hadn't just read about 15 books and written no less than 70 pages of capstone work (that's not even counting all the other papers from the year), squeezed two honors classes into one semester (one of which I didn't even need), and started the year exactly one day after re-entering the country. That is what I would say is the kind of year you need at least a month's break from before beginning another ridiculously hard degree. Still, I guess if you look at it that way, the whole thing is kind of my fault. But it's easier to blame computers and lazy, incompetent registrars. I don't even think 'registrar' should be a word. Just look how awkward and ridiculous it is.

And now I guess I should talk about the house. Remember the house. Let me put it in capitals so you'll recognize and revere its importance. The House. Yeah, that one. Remember how we loved it, and how we were devastated to find that it was being shown and preened like a prize-winning Pomeranian? And remember (you might not) how we found out how much the previous renters paid for heating/air every month, and then we closed the book on that dream and started searching other horizons for living space? Okay, good. Then you're caught up to speed.

So we looked at an apartment over the weekend. We were going to look at three, but (As is our style) we looked at one, fell in love, and mentally cancelled the hadn't-been-made-yet-anyway appointments for the day. We put down a deposit (to prevent other people from snagging our turf, more than anything) and headed home. When we got there we were informed that the owners of the house were growing desperate. So desperate in fact that they wanted to sit down with us and a few other knowledgeable people (that 'e' before 'a' in 'knowledgeable' has always bugged me) and see what we could possibly do to improve the house so to have lower bills. The thing is, if I don't get the job we can't afford the house no matter what. I highly doubt they can lower our bills enough to make it affordable for us. And if I do get the job, it will make my commute an hour and a half instead of just an hour. And when you're going both ways, those thirty minutes will add up.

I'm beginning to wonder why every situation I find myself in is some kind of catch-22 and why nothing can ever actually just work out easily. Is this really what it's going to be like?

On a brighter (and completely unrelated) note, last night I woke up when Michael came in, like I always do. He asked me if I was going to open my eyes, and I wasn't planning on it, but I figured I hadn't seen him in over 12 hours. The least I could do would be to have a brief conversation with the boy, in which I was conscious and actually looking at him. I rolled over to face him and saw that he had bought me roses. He said, "I've never bought you roses before, and I saw these at the store and decided to get them for you." Right now they are on the night stand, but I'm planning to set them up in whichever dwelling we move into (hopefully soon, I might add, so the roses don't turn into some kind of Beauty and the Beast situation). So I guess everything is not all bad.